Université de Montréal

Code-Switching Between Cultures And Languages: Creative connectivity

par

Muna Shafiq

Département d’études anglaises

Faculté des arts et des sciences

Thèse présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures

en vue de l’obtention du grade de doctorat

en études anglaises

Novembre, 2013

©, Muna Shafiq, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………….. 1

Avant

propos…………………………………………………………………………………4

Résumé…….…………………………………………………………………………6

Abstract…...…………………………………………………………………………13

Introduction……………………………………………………………………….....19

The Selected Works………………………………………………………....29

Code-Switching……………………………………………………………..46

What has not been done and how I bridge the gap………………………….51

Methodology…………………………………………….………………...68

Homi Bhabha and the Hybrid……….………………………………………70

Heteroglossia and Mikhail Bakhtin….……………………………………...76

Doris Sommer: Code-Switching as Jouissance……………………………..81

James Clifford and Traveling Cultures : An Ethnographic Perspective….…83

Roland Barthes : Transgressive Explorations of Identity……….…………..85

Chapter 1: Performative Narratives and Other Desires of the socially and

culturally defined female immigrant voice………………………....93

Subjectivity and the Female Immigrant Voice……………………..97

Hiromi

Goto………………………………………………………………...99

Maxine Hong Kingston………………………………………...… 114

Eva Hoffman………………………………………………………130

Gloria Anzaldúa…………………………………………………...151

Conclusion…………………………………………………………164

Chapter 2: Performative Narratives and Other Desires of the socially and

culturally defined male immigrant voice ........................................170

Dany Laferrière………………………...………………………….180

Richard Rodriguez…………………………………………………197

Antonio D’Alfonso………………………………………………...215

Conclusion…………………………………………………………233

Chapter 3: Linguistic Code-switching and Non-translation...............................237

Chantal Zabus……………………………………………………...243

Catherine Leclerc…………………………………………………..244

Sherry Simon……………………………………………………....248

Doris Sommer…………………………………………………..….255

Historical Context………………………………………………….259

Gloria Anzaldúa……………………………………………………260

Hiromi Goto…………………………………………………….....265

Unilingual Readers…………………………………………….…..268

Non-Translation and Code-Switching……………………….….....280

Conclusion: Metaphor of Desire…………………………….….....294

Conclusion: Where do we go from here? ..……………………………….…….302

Does hybrid identification offer better connectivity

between cultures? …………………………………………............311

Barthesian jouissance……………………………………………...320

Multi-lingual Education: Desire for Other Codes………………....325

Code-Switching: Desire for Others………………………………..336

Final Comments………………………………………………..…..343

Appendix A: Translations by Keith Santorelli …………………………...……….. 347

Appendix B: Translations by Carlos Jimenez……………………………………... 350

Appendix C: Interviews………..………………………………………..………… 358

Endnotes…..……………………………………………….………………………. 370

Works Cited………………………………………….………………………......... 372

1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

- I would first like to extend my heartfelt and gracious thanks to the

English Department and Robert Schwartzwald for accepting my topic

of research and supporting my desire to explore academic horizons

outside conventional standards.

- I am particularly grateful to have had Robert Schwartzwald as my

supervisor. It has been a privilege for me to work under his supervision

and guidance, to have had his insight and understanding throughout

this journey.

- Last year was a particularly difficult year for me however through its

challenges I was blessed with the presence of several key men in my

life. I would like to acknowledge their timely entrance here. Each one,

(Stéphane Blouin (his son Alexandre), Gerry Lescot, Guillaume Audet

and Brian Fiset), has contributed to my inner healing process which has

had a very positive impact in other areas of my life. My brother Amer

Ahmed was also an unexpected source of strength and support.

- I am also thankful to my dear friend David Warriner for his translation

services as well as editorial corrections of the French portion of my

thesis abstract, Carlos Jimenez for the Spanish/Mexican translations

and Dianne Mangal for some Japanese translations. A special thanks to

Alice-Anne Busque (French literature teacher at Cégep Limoilou) for

the final corrections of my avant-propos and abstract in French.

- Special mention goes to my friend Keith Santorelli. He is a brother and

friend and we have shared many interesting exchanges about my

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research work. He also translated some of my Spanish/Mexican

passages.

- Our friendships (like family) not only define us, in many ways they

allow us to grow and challenge ourselves. Indeed such connections are

creative spaces of love. I am blessed with a generous circle of close

friends in (Quebec City, Toronto, Montreal, New York and Ottawa and

even in other parts of Canada and the world) all too many to name

here. Their presence has allowed me to decompress, rediscover myself

in interesting ways, and share joy outside Ph.D. world thereby giving

me much needed bursts of revitalization. Two people walked into my

world (while I was working on revisions) in the last six months and

they deserve special mention. Raphaël Klensch and Joëlle Bourdeau

have had a particular impact in how I continue to evolve and feed on

this idea of creative connectivity that is the heart of my thesis. This

journey that is life is a continual reminder of how extremely passionate

and personal my life experiences have been.

- I also feel blessed to know that I wake up every morning excited to go

to work and to greet my students at Cégep Limoilou. They have been

and continue to be a positive source of creative inspiration. My work

with them has allowed me to fuel my desire for my research topic

throughout my studies with greater passion.

- My life in Québec City has had an aesthetic and creative value equally

enriching. Living in this francophone city with its inspiring landscapes

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has given me and continues to give me, a sharper perspective of who I

am and how I define personal and public space. Ultimately I

understand such space as a translation of cultural identity and personal

growth. This city has also given me a newer way to understand my

cultural and social values.

- Music has always nourished my soul and spirit. This past winter house

music (which I have always enjoyed) has seeped into my spirit in a

rather surprising way. It has become a great source of release. House

music has become a symbolic reminder of all that is hybrid in me and

in my way of coloring my space(s).

- I am most grateful for my parents’ support. Rashida and Martin Staring

have always stood by me and believed in my ability to successfully

finish whatever I set my mind to do. Their level of support before and

during my university studies has been a guiding force.

- Last and most especially, I would like to try to express how much

Karina Shafiq has had, and continues to have, a hand in my process of

becoming … she is an equal mix of best friend, sister, and daughter and

the best result of my teenage rebellion. There are no words that could

judiciously describe the love, courage, faith, hope, affection, energy,

silliness, laughter, and joy we have shared and I hope we will continue

to share.

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AVANT-PROPOS

Dire de moi que j’appartiens à une seule culture ou à une seule religion,

ou encore à un groupe de gens défini, est presque impossible, étant donné mon

chemin de vie. Née en Inde, j’ai passé mon enfance entre ce pays, l’Arabie

Saoudite et Dubaï, aux Émirats arabes unis. Quand j’avais dix ans, notre

famille a déménagé en Amérique du Nord, plus précisément à Toronto. Mes

parents ont choisi de s’installer au Canada pour nous offrir, à mon frère et moi

une meilleure qualité de vie, et surtout de meilleures options pour nos études.

J’ai donc vécu mon adolescence et une grande partie de ma vie adulte à

Toronto. Par la suite, j’ai décidé, il y a une douzaine d’années, de déménager à

Québec.

Alors quand les gens me demandent aujourd’hui d’où je viens, il n’y a

pas de réponse simple! Je me considère comme une femme ayant l’esprit

cosmopolite parsemé de croyances, de valeurs et de traditions très diversifiées.

Mon intérêt à faire ce doctorat a été grandement motivé par mon désir de

mieux comprendre les espaces brisés, qui sont à la fois enrichissants et

déchirants, de ma propre identité hybride. Aujourd’hui lorsque quelqu’un me

demande qui je suis et d’où je viens, je réponds : je suis une Torontoise et une

Québécoise teintée par des codes culturels provenant de l’Inde et de mes

expériences en Arabie Saoudite, avec un zeste de Dubaï.

Dans mon quotidien, je parle l’anglais et le français, mais

malheureusement je ne parle plus mes langues d’origine, soit l’urdu et l’arabe.

Enfant, à l’âge de 5 ans je maitrisais très bien l’anglais et mes deux langues

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maternelles. Cela dit, j’avais un problème de locution et le pédiatre a demandé

à mes parents de concentrer mon apprentissage linguistique sur une seule

langue. Ils ont choisi l’anglais en sachant qu’ils projetaient d’immigrer au

Canada dans un futur proche. Malgré la perte de ces langues, celles-ci

résonnent encore dans mon esprit à travers la musique et dans les façons dont

je traduis mes pensées sentimentales.

Côté religion, durant mon enfance j’ai fréquenté des écoles catholiques,

alors qu’à la maison mes parents m’ont donné une formation musulmane.

Malgré le fait que j’aie été éduquée dans le cadre de ces deux grandes

religions, ma perception de moi et ma subjectivité féminine ont évolué loin de

ces doctrines religieuses, car elles ne soutiennent plus mes croyances actuelles.

Aujourd’hui je me considère comme une personne ayant une spiritualité

alimentée par les croyances et les valeurs des Premières Nations et par la

pensée bouddhiste.

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RÉSUMÉ

Problème

Ma thèse porte sur l’identité individuelle comme interrogation sur les

enjeux personnels et sur ce qui constitue l’identification hybride à l’intérieur

des notions concurrentielles en ce qui a trait à l’authenticité. Plus précisément,

j’aborde le concept des identifications hybrides en tant que zones

intermédiaires pour ce qui est de l’alternance de codes linguistiques et comme

négociation des espaces continuels dans leur mouvement entre les cultures et

les langues. Une telle négociation engendre des tensions et/ou apporte le lien

créatif. Les tensions sont inhérentes à n’importe quelle construction d’identité

où les lignes qui définissent des personnes ne sont pas spécifiques à une

culture ou à une langue, où des notions de l’identité pure sont contestées et des

codes communs de l’appartenance sont compromis. Le lien créatif se produit

dans les exemples où l’alternance de code linguistique ou la négociation des

espaces produit le mouvement ouvert et fluide entre les codes de concurrence

des références et les différences à travers les discriminations raciales, la

sexualité, la culture et la langue.

Les travaux que j’ai sélectionnés représentent une section transversale

de quelques auteurs migrants provenant de la minorité en Amérique du Nord

qui alternent les codes linguistiques de cette manière. Les travaux détaillent le

temps et l’espace dans leur traitement de l’identité et dans la façon dont ils

cernent l’hybridité dans les textes suivants : The Woman Warrior de Maxine

Hong Kingston (1975-76), Hunger of Memory de Richard Rodriguez (1982),

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Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer de Dany Laferrière

(1985), Borderlands/La Frontera de Gloria Anzalduá (1987), Lost in

Translation de Eva Hoffman (1989), Avril ou l’anti-passion de Antonio

D’Alfonso (1990) et Chorus of Mushrooms de Hiromi Goto (1994).

Enjeux/Questions

La notion de l’identification hybride est provocante comme sujet. Elle

met en question l’identité pure. C’est un sujet qui a suscité beaucoup de

discussions tant en ce qui a trait à la littérature, à la politique, à la société, à la

linguistique, aux communications, qu’au sein même des cercles

philosophiques. Ce sujet est compliqué parce qu’il secoue la base des espaces

fixes et structurés de l’identité dans sa signification culturelle et linguistique.

Par exemple, la notion de patrie n’a pas les représentations exclusives du pays

d’origine ou du pays d’accueil. De même, les notions de race, d’appartenance

ethnique, et d’espaces sexuels sont parfois négativement acceptées si elles

proviennent des codes socialement admis et normalisés de l’extérieur. De tels

codes de la signification sont souvent définis par l’étiquette d’identification

hétérosexuelle et blanche. Dans l’environnement généralisé d’aujourd’hui,

plus que jamais, une personne doit négocier qui elle est, au sens de son

appartenance à soi, en tant qu’individu et ce, face aux modèles locaux,

régionaux, nationaux, voire même globaux de la subjectivité. Nous pouvons

interpréter ce mouvement comme une série de couches superposées de la

signification. Quand nous rencontrons une personne pour la première fois,

nous ne voyons que la couche supérieure. D’ailleurs, son soi intérieur est

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caché par de nombreuses couches superposées (voir Joseph D. Straubhaar).

Toutefois, sous cette couche supérieure, on retrouve beaucoup d’autres

couches et tout comme pour un oignon, on doit les enlever une par une pour

que l’individualité complète d’une personne soit révélée et comprise. Le noyau

d’une personne représente un point de départ crucial pour opposer qui elle était

à la façon dont elle se transforme sans cesse. Sa base, ou son noyau, dépend du

moment, et comprend, mais ne s’y limite pas, ses origines, son environnement

et ses expériences d’enfance, son éducation, sa notion de famille, et ses

amitiés. De plus, les notions d’amour-propre et d’amour pour les autres,

d’altruisme, sont aussi des points importants. Il y a une relation réciproque

entre le soi et l’autre qui établit notre degré d’estime de soi. En raison de la

mondialisation, notre façon de comprendre la culture, en fait, comment on

consomme et définit la culture, devient rapidement un phénomène de

déplacement. À l’intérieur de cette arène de culture généralisée, la façon dont

les personnes sont à l’origine chinoises, mexicaines, italiennes, ou autres, et

poursuivent leur évolution culturelle, se définit plus aussi facilement qu’avant.

Approche

Ainsi, ma thèse explore la subjectivité hybride comme position des

tensions et/ou des relations créatrices entre les cultures et les langues. Quoique

je ne souhaite aucunement simplifier ni le processus, ni les questions de l’auto-

identification, il m’apparaît que la subjectivité hybride est aujourd’hui une

réalité croissante dans l’arène généralisée de la culture. Ce processus

d’échange est particulièrement complexe chez les populations migrantes en

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conflit avec leur désir de s’intégrer dans les nouveaux espaces adoptés, c’est-à-

dire leur pays d’accueil. Ce réel désir d’appartenance peut entrer en conflit

avec celui de garder les espaces originels de la culture définie par son pays

d’origine. Ainsi, les références antérieures de l’identification d’une personne,

les fondements de son individualité, son noyau, peuvent toujours ne pas

correspondre à, ou bien fonctionner harmonieusement avec, les références

extérieures et les couches d’identification changeantes, celles qu’elle

s’approprie du pays d’accueil. Puisque nos politiques, nos religions et nos

établissements d’enseignement proviennent des représentations nationales de

la culture et de la communauté, le processus d’identification et la création de

son individualité extérieure sont formées par le contact avec ces

établissements. La façon dont une personne va chercher l’identification entre

les espaces personnels et les espaces publics détermine ainsi le degré de conflit

et/ou de lien créatif éprouvé entre les modes et les codes des espaces culturels

et linguistiques.

Par conséquent, l’identification des populations migrantes suggère que

la « community and culture will represent both a hybridization of home and

host cultures » (Straubhaar 27). Il y a beaucoup d’écrits au sujet de l’hybridité

et des questions de l’identité et de la patrie, toutefois cette thèse aborde la

valeur créative de l’alternance de codes culturels et linguistiques.

Ce que la littérature indiquera

Par conséquent, la plate-forme à partir de laquelle j’explore mon sujet

de l’hybridité flotte entre l’interprétation postcoloniale de Homi Bhabha

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concernant le troisième espace hybride; le modèle d’hétéroglossie de Mikhail

Bakhtine qui englobent plusieurs de mes exemples; la représentation de

Roland Barthes sur l’identité comme espace transgressif qui est un modèle de

référence et la contribution de Chantal Zabus sur le palimpseste et l’alternance

de codes africains. J’utilise aussi le modèle de Sherry Simon portant sur

l’espace urbain hybride de Montréal qui établit un lien important avec la

valeur des échanges culturels et linguistiques, et les analyses de Janet Paterson.

En effet, la façon dont elle traite la figure de l’Autre dans les modèles

littéraires au Québec fournisse un aperçu régional et national de

l’identification hybride. Enfin, l’exploration du bilinguisme de Doris Sommer

comme espace esthétique et même humoristique d’identification situe

l’hybridité dans une espace de rencontre créative.

Conséquence

Mon approche dans cette thèse ne prétend pas résoudre les problèmes

qui peuvent résulter des plates-formes de la subjectivité hybride. Pour cette

raison, j’évite d’aborder toute approche politique ou nationaliste de l’identité

qui réfute l’identification hybride. De la même façon, je n’amène pas de

discussion approfondie sur les questions postcoloniales. Le but de cette thèse

est de démontrer à quel point la subjectivité hybride peut être une zone de

relation créatrice lorsque l’alternance de codes permet des échanges de

communication plus intimes entre les cultures et les langues. C’est un espace

qui devient créateur parce qu’il favorise une attitude plus ouverte vis-à-vis les

différents champs qui passent par la culture, aussi bien la langue, que la

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sexualité, la politique ou la religion. Les zones hybrides de l’identification

nous permettent de contester les traditions dépassées, les coutumes, les modes

de communication et la non-acceptation, toutes choses dépassées qui

emprisonnent le désir et empêchent d’explorer et d’adopter des codes en

dehors des normes et des modèles de la culture contenus dans le discours

blanc, dominant, de l’appartenance culturelle et linguistique mondialisée.

Ainsi, il appert que ces zones des relations multi-ethniques exigent plus

d’attention des cercles scolaires puisque la population des centres urbains à

travers l’Amérique du Nord devient de plus en plus nourrie par d’autres types

de populations. Donc, il existe un besoin réel d’établir une communication

sincère qui permettrait à la population de bien comprendre les populations

adoptées. C’est une invitation à stimuler une relation plus intime de l’un avec

l’autre. Toutefois, il est évident qu’une communication efficace à travers les

frontières des codes linguistiques, culturels, sexuels, religieux et politiques

exige une négociation continuelle. Mais une telle négociation peut stimuler la

compréhension plus juste des différences (culturelle ou linguistique) si des

institutions académiques offrent des programmes d’études intégrant davantage

les littératures migrantes. Ma thèse vise à illustrer (par son choix littéraire)

l’identification hybride comme une réalité importante dans les cultures

généralisées qui croissent toujours aujourd’hui. Les espaces géographiques

nous gardent éloignés les uns des autres, mais notre consommation de

produits exotiques, qu’ils soient culturels ou non, et même notre

consommation de l’autre, s’est rétrécie sensiblement depuis les deux dernières

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décennies et les indicateurs suggèrent que ce processus n’est pas une tendance,

mais plutôt une nouvelle manière d’éprouver la vie et de connaître les autres.

Ainsi les marqueurs qui forment nos frontières externes, aussi bien que ces

marqueurs qui nous définissent de l’intérieur, exigent un examen minutieux de

ces enjeux inter(trans)culturels, surtout si nous souhaitons nous en tenir avec

succès à des langues et des codes culturels présents, tout en favorisant la

diversité culturelle et linguistique.

MOTS-CLÉS : identification hybride, mouvement ouvert, alternance de code

linguistique, négociation des espaces, tensions, connectivité créative

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ABSTRACT

Problem

My thesis addresses individual identity as an interrogation of personal

stakes and what constitutes hybrid identification inside competitive notions of

authenticity. More specifically, I approach the concept of hybridized

identification(s) as in-between zones of code-switching and as a negotiation of

spaces continual in their movement between cultures and languages. Such a

negotiation results in tensions and/or creative connectivity. Tensions are

inherent in any identity construction where the lines that define individuals are

not specific to one culture or one language, where notions of pure identity are

challenged and communal codes of belonging are jeopardized. Creative

connectivity occurs in those instances where code-switching or negotiation of

spaces produces open and fluid movement between competing codes of

references and differences across color lines, sexuality, culture and language.

The following works I have selected represent a cross-section of some

minority migrant writers in North America who code-switch in this manner.

The works are time and space specific in their treatment of identity and in how

the writers I focus on frame hybridity in their writing: Maxine Hong

Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975-76), Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of

Memory (1982), Dany Laferrière’s Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans

se fatiguer (1985), Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), Eva

Hoffman’s Lost in Translation (1989), Antonio D’Alfonso’s Avril ou l’anti-

passion (1990) and Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms (1994).

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Issue(s)

The notion of hybrid identification is a challenging topic, especially for

those who defend the notion of pure cultural identities. It has been a subject of

much debate inside literary, political, social, linguistic, communications and

even philosophical circles. It is complicated because it shakes the foundation

of identity structured inside fixed and inclusive space(s) of cultural and

linguistic meaning. For instance, notions of home are not exclusive

representations of country of origin or host country. Similarly, notions of race,

ethnicity, and sexual spaces are sometimes negatively othered if they fall

outside socially accepted and normalized codes. Such codes of meaning are

often defined by white heterosexual labels of identification. In today’s

globalized environment, more than ever, individuals must negotiate who they

are inside a sense of self as a movement between local, regional, national, even

global models of subjectivity. We can understand this movement as a series of

super-imposed layers of meaning. When we first meet people we are

introduced to their top tier, who they are and how they choose to reveal that

top exteriorized layer (I borrow the idea of layered selves from Joseph D.

Straubhaar). However beneath that top layer there are many other layers, like

an onion, they must be unravelled in order for an individual’s complete self to

be revealed and/or understood. The core of an individual, their nucleus,

represents a crucial starting point between who they were versus how they are

perpetually becoming. One’s foundation or core is contingent upon, but not

limited to, one’s origins, childhood environment and experiences, education,

15

notion of family, friendships, and perhaps most important, notions of self-love

and love for another and how the relation between the two creates/builds self-

esteem. Because of globalization, how culture is understood, in fact, how

culture is consumed and defined is quickly becoming a traveling phenomenon.

Inside this arena of globalized culture how individuals begin and continue as

Chinese, Mexican, Italian, etc. is not as easy to define as it once was.

Approach

Thus my thesis explores hybridized subjectivity as a position of

tensions and/or creative connectivity between cultures and languages. While I

do not wish to simplify the process or issues of self-identification, I believe

that hybrid subjectivity is a growing reality in today’s globalized arena of

cultural bartering. This bartering process is particularly complicated for

migrant populations whose desire for belonging in new adopted spaces, their

host country, is often in conflict with, or challenged by, desire for past spaces

or cultural spaces defined by their country of origin. Thus past references of

identification, the base of their core self may not always correspond to, or

function harmoniously with, their outer, newer and shifting layers of

identification, ones they appropriate from the host country. Because our

political, religious, and educational institutions stem from national

representations of culture and community, the process of identification and the

creation of one’s outside self are shaped through an encounter with these

institutions. How individuals seek identification between their personal and

public spaces thus determines the degree of conflict and or creative

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connectivity experienced between modes/codes of cultural and linguistic

spaces. Therefore identification for migrant populations suggest that

“community and culture will represent both a hybridization of home and host

cultures” (Straubhaar 27).There is much written on hybridity and issues of

identity and nation however this thesis focuses on the creative value of code-

switching between cultures and languages.

What the Literature Will Say

Therefore the platform from which I explore my topic of hybridity

fluctuates between Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial interpretation of hybrid third

spaces, Mikhail Bakhtin’s model of heteroglossic dialogues, Roland Barthes

representation of identity as a transgressive space and Chantal Zabus’

understanding of the African palimpsest and code-switching. Then Sherry

Simon’s model of Montréal’s hybrid urban space and Janet Paterson’s

perceptions of how the Other has shaped and (re)defined literary models of

identity in Québec provide a regional and national glimpse of hybridized

identification. Finally, Doris Sommer’s exploration of bilingualism as an

aesthetical, even humorous space of identification situates hybridity as a

creative space of connection.

Consequence

My approach in this thesis does not claim to solve problems that may

arise from platforms of hybridized subjectivity. For this reason, I avoid

political or nationalistic approaches to identity that refute/discredit, in many

instances, hybridized identifications. I also steer away from any in-depth

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discussion of post-colonial issues. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate how

hybridized subjectivity can be a zone of creative connectivity when code-

switching offers more intimate exchanges of communication between cultures

and languages. It is a creative connectivity because it promotes a more open-

minded attitude towards peoples’ cultural, linguistic, sexual, even political and

religious differences. Hybridized zones of identification allow us to challenge

dated traditions, customs, modes of communication and acceptance that

imprison people’s desire to explore and adopt codes outside standards and

models of culture contained within a dominant white discourse of cultural and

linguistic belonging.

Such zones of hybridized connectivity require more attention from

academic circles. More specifically, as the population in urban city centers

across North America becomes increasingly dotted by Other populations, there

is a greater need for the host population as well as adopted populations to

explore and foster more intimate understandings of each other. Effective

communication across borders of linguistic, cultural, sexual, religious and

political codes requires continual negotiation. Such negotiation fosters more

intimate understandings of difference (cultural or linguistic). If academic

institutions offer a more inclusive curriculum of minority literatures to future

generations perhaps tolerance will become outdated because acceptance will

be the norm. My thesis aims to illustrate (through its literary focus) hybridized

identification as an important reality of today’s ever-increasing globalized

culture(s). Geographic spaces may not be shrinking however how we consume

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products, culture, music, and even each other has shrunk substantially in the

last two decades and indicators suggest that this process is not a trend but a

new way of experiencing life and knowing people. Thus the markers that form

our external layers as well as those markers that define us from the inside

require closer scrutiny if we wish to successfully hold onto existing languages

and cultural codes while promoting cultural and linguistic diversity.

KEY WORDS: hybrid identification, in-between zones, code-switching,

negotiation of spaces, tensions, creative connectivity

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INTRODUCTION

My thesis focuses on code-switching (both linguistic and cultural) as an

important and creative reality of today’s migrant North American populations.

Although my promotion of code-switching is framed inside a literary context,

it is also relevant inside a didactic frame. Therefore I address the value of

creative connectivity in code-switching as an important pedagogical tool. In

my conclusion I will summarize this value. My three chapters, the meat of my

thesis spotlight different forms of code-switching and creative connectivity

addressed in the literary works I have selected. Because my selected works

represent very different historical, cultural, sexual and linguistic models, it

would be impossible to compare and contrast these works in this thesis.

Consequently my methodology is equally diverse and multi-disciplinary. For

the most part my choices for my theoretical frame mirror the time period in

which the literary works were written.

The diverse multidisciplinary theoretical choices I have selected are

meant to illustrate the globalized context of how we live, communicate,

construct personal relationships and work today. The pedagogical and artistic

value of code-switching is, in my opinion, an essential tool in today’s

globalized cultural and economic world. Our ability to intimately code-switch

between languages for instance can foster better relationships, personally and

professionally across barriers of race, culture and geographic distances. For

this reason, my thesis focuses on individual identity rather than collective

forms. I wish to explore identity issues as an artistic form so if my illustrations

20

of creative connectivity focus more on individual identity over a collective

one, it is a conscious choice on my part. Thus the theoretical framework of this

thesis draws upon collective issues of identity, hybridity, nation and language

to pave the path for connectivity between people and how I emphasize

intimate relationships throughout this thesis as la relation privilegiée.

Moreover the marriage between pedagogy and artistic value I speak of may be

understood through Homi Bhabha’s reference to cultural authority as an

ambivalent space where the narrative, what Bhabha refers to as “the

performativity of language” is a reproductive force (Bhabha, Nation and

Narration 3). As a teacher and as an aficionado of cultural diversity in the

homeroom rather than simply in the playroom, my desire to pursue this topic is

personal and passionate. I therefore address hybrid identification in this thesis

as a shifting, reproductive wheel of creative connectivity. Those instances

where individuals identify themselves as hybrid I translate as desire for

creative connectivity between linguistic and Other(ed) cultural spaces. Inside

such zones of creative connectivity, there will be some level of challenge or

conflict. For instance, if the framework of a cohesive homogenized cultural

identity is rattled by Other languages and cultures, tensions will surface. Let us

call these tensions inconveniences since they interfere with accepted patterns

of pure cultural and linguistic identity.

In the Introduction of Walden and “Civil Disobedience”, W.S. Merwin

refers to Henry David Thoreau as “one of those inconvenient and

uncomfortable figures, a seeker” (Thoreau viii). By living in the woods for a

21

few years, Thoreau wished to illustrate how material comforts trap humans

and prevent them from being happy. For this reason, his time in the woods

may be understood as an identity quest. Being separated from the normal

crowd for such a lengthy period of time allows Thoreau to observe people

from an outside position, much like an anthropologist. This outsider position

separates him from others however it also allows him a more intimate process

of self-reflection. The creative connectivity a hybrid seeks may be understood

symbolically through Thoreau’s outsider position. Those wishing connectivity

between different cultural and linguistic codes must in some ways (like

Thoreau) become inconvenient and uncomfortable seekers by stepping outside

familiar cultural codes to define themselves. Their desire to move between

cultural codes and linguistic spaces gives them an insider position as well as a

hybrid outsider position; thus a broader angle of observation and perspective

and perhaps a more complex and profound engagement with Others.

Moreover I understand hybridized identification as a series of

reproductive narratives, what I explore in this thesis as creative connectivity.

These cycles of rebirth may be understood through Homi Bhabha’s thoughts

on “nation-space” where “the ambivalent identifications of love and hate

occupy the same psychic space; and [where] paranoid projections ‘outwards’

return to haunt and split the place from which they are made” (Nation and

Narration 300). This ambivalent identification Bhabha speaks of marks the

hybrid’s life experiences. Being hybrid therefore involves a continual split

from fixed notions of sameness. Thus for the hybrid the notion of “firm

22

boundaries” cannot be maintained because as Bhabha suggests “people are the

articulation of a doubling of the national address, an ambivalent movement

between the discourses of pedagogy and the performative” (300). This thesis

then addresses spaces the hybrid occupies as ones shifting between pedagogy

and the performative Bhabha refers to when he speaks of nation. Bhabha

views cultural space as a zone with transgressive boundaries therefore I would

suggest that those who occupy the spaces on the peripheries are subjected to

more transgressed definitions of cultural space(s) than their counterparts who

dwell and move inside one language and one more-or-less defined cultural

context. The hybrid’s negotiation involves a continually shifting insider and

outsider position between dominant and peripheral other(ed) cultural spaces. If

as Bhabha states “race is confused with nation ... or ... linguistic groups” then

such differences exclude those outside a nation’s dominant race (8). For this

reason, those who do not wish to be defined through fixed cultural codes or

one language occupy peripheral spaces that transgress between zones of

pedagogy and the performative in their narratives. Bhabha refers to nation as

“a soul, a spiritual principle ... a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the

feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is

prepared to make in the future” (19). In the selected works, those aspects of

life experience that surface from the past I understand as pedagogy and those

aspects that focus on a present or future context I understand as performative.

Bhabha’s understanding and definition of these terms provide an important

23

and necessary platform from which I interpret and apply them in this thesis.

According to Bhabha,

people are not simply historical events or parts of a patriotic body

politic. They are also a complex rhetorical strategy of social reference

... the historical ‘objects’ of a nationalist pedagogy [where] .... [t]he

scraps, patches, and rags of daily life must be repeatedly turned into the

signs of a national culture, while the very act of the narrative

performance interpellates a growing circle of national subjects (297).

There is therefore a “split between the continuist, accumulative temporality of

the pedagogical, and the repetitious, recursive strategy of the performative”

(297). For Bhabha, this splitting process is at the heart of “writing the nation”

(297). I employ this splitting process Bhabha speaks of in my exploration of

hybrid identity and creative connectivity between cultures and languages in

the selected works. As Bhabha states, “people are ... the forces that signify the

more specific address to contentious, unequal interests and identities within the

population” (297). Because of their “a priori historical presence” people may

be viewed and studied as pedagogical objects while their performative spaces

may be understood as “the sovereignty of the nation’s self-generation” process

(299). For the hybrid, this splitting between pedagogy and the performative

occurs in their negotiation of identity that is a reproductive process between

different cultures, languages, even countries.

The split Bhabha speaks of between pedagogy and the performative is

illustrated in each of the selected works. These terms therefore come up

repeatedly. However I focus on this split (more-or-less) outside notions of

national identity. The literary works I have selected illustrate cultural

reproductive cycles (because how we attach cultural codes to ourselves is an

24

evolving process) under Bhabha’s notion of pedagogy and the performative. In

those instances where code-switching occurs there is a split between an

individual’s attachment to their historical presence (their past) and their

evolving self-generation process which determines how they move forward

culturally and linguistically. Self-generation is then another form of rebirth and

in the selected works it is experienced through the telling of stories and sharing

of individual pains and pleasures. From this telling process, the writers engage

readers inside their particular spaces of pedagogy. However, “the subject is

graspable only in the passage between telling/told, between ‘here’ and

‘somewhere else’” (301). Lived experience or pedagogy is narrated as a

constant movement between past and present. Different writing styles and

techniques such as parody, myth, etc. offer a performative tool of expression to

address pains, joys, tensions and conflicts. This movement between pedagogy

and the performative means that hybrid identification in the selected works

falls under Bhabha’s view of cultural space as a zone with transgressed

boundaries. Such zones of transgression and hybrid connectivities may also be

understood as transgressed Barthesian desires. I understand the term

transgressed as a symbolic space, a shifting zone of meaning. Bhabha focuses

on cultural identity vis-à-vis a nation’s narrative voice as an interrogation of

what it means to become a people, ultimately an interrogation of “our intimate

relationships with each other and with others [my emphasis]” (7). There is a

great element of symbolic meaning in how we construct and give meaning to

cultural relationships or establish connectivity between cultures. So I am

25

making a link between Bhabha’s in-between cultural spaces as transgressive

boundaries with Barthes’ thoughts on sexuality as transgressed desires. His

interrogations about the human heart draw an interesting link between

Bhabha’s concept of intimate relationships and how I address them in this

thesis.

Qu’est-ce que le monde, qu’est-ce que l’autre va faire de mon désir?

Voilà l’inquiétude où se rassemblent tous les mouvements du cœur,

tous les « problèmes » du cœur (Fragments d’un discours amoureux,

Barthes 63).

Every relationship is ultimately influenced by emotion and the heart. As a

Barthesian concept, transgressed desire implies freedom to explore and

exchange with others intimately by collapsing barriers of difference. Thus the

term transgressed may be understood as the same moment where there is a

split between pedagogy and the performative in Bhabha’s cultural subject.

This is the reproductive stage for the hybrid subject identifying (pedagogy)

and negotiating (performative) identity between past points of cultural

reference and current, different cultural realities. The works I have selected

illustrate connectivity or code-switching as transgressed desires. The

movement between cultural markers of identity such as race, religion,

sexuality, male and female subjectivity along with linguistic codes by

choosing translation and non translation techniques is a key element in how

the narratives explore reproductive zones of identification. In this way they are

transgressed zones because they challenge accepted visions of identity,

cultural belonging and how people connect with each other. Ultimately I

assign value to code-switching between cultures and languages as a

26

transgressed desire, one explored intimately and therefore with a focus on

individual relationships. It is a good beginning and approach in collapsing and

redefining fixed, singular notions of identity, language, nation, and

community. Connectivity is a spiritual site of negotiation as much as it is a

social one. Therefore it is an evolving process which begins with the self and it

is then projected towards others, usually one person at a time.

D’un côté de mon cœur la misère subsiste

De l’autre je vois clair j’espère et je m’irise

Je reflète fertile un corps qui se prolonge

Je lutte je suis ivre de lutter pour vivre

Dans la clarté d’autrui j’érige ma victoire.

~ Paul Eluard

The underlying message in this short poem by Éluard may be

understood as a proclamation of the inter-dependence between individuals.

This notion of interdependence is necessary if society is to maintain a cohesive

sense of community and cultural connection. If there was only one pure

culture, one language, or one vision of how life should be lived and how

people should love each other then there would be no need to classify or define

cultural and linguistic identity. In spite of our desire to remain individual and

unique, many parts of our identity are carved out and defined through images

of the people around us. « Soi-même comme un autre … implique l’altérité à

un degré si intime que l’une ne se laisse pas penser sans l’autre, que l’une

passe plutôt dans l’autre … non pas seulement d’une comparaison – soi-même

semblable à un autre - mais bien d’une implication: soi-même en tant que …

autre » (Ricœur 14). This Ricœurian idea of oneself as another implies that

individual identity is negotiated and created out of patterns and images of

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identity taken from, and therefore projected by, other people. Thus self-hood is

a mirror(ed) image of many othered superimposed selves. The codes (cultural

and linguistic) that shape self-hood are entangled inside layered webs of

difference(s) and sameness. How we recognize and interpret them in our

understanding and visualization of self versus Other is a co-dependent process

of negotiation. In the selected works, this Ricœurian idea of oneself as another

is illustrated in those instances when the narrative is performative because in

such moments the process of self-understanding is measured by how the

protagonists or narrators rely on, are even dependent upon, images of others in

order to redefine themselves.

Roland Barthes makes a link between photography and self-

identification in La chambre claire which provides an interesting frame to

understand this idea of oneself as another. Barthes suggests self-hood is

« imprécise, imaginaire même…personne n’est jamais que la copie d’une

copie, réelle ou mentale » (157, 159). However it is from re-created forms of

difference and sameness that we can begin to understand and grapple with

definitions of cultural identity across borders of race, nationhood, language,

and sexuality. Thus hybrid subjectivity in individuals is established through a

communicative exchange based on a because of differences platform of

acceptance rather than the more pejorative in spite of differences standpoint of

tolerance.

In Antonio D’Alfonso’s narrative, his protagonist Fabrizio cannot

simply define himself as an Italian immigrant. Each time Dany Laferrière’s

28

protagonist describes one of the women he has sexual relations with the reader

understands an aspect of the protagonist’s personality. In Hiromi Goto’s work,

grandmother and granddaughter define their cultural desires through an

exploration with sexual partners as an interpellation of hidden othered aspects

of their identity. When Eva Hoffman shares the pain of her parents’ trauma,

the reader becomes more profoundly acquainted with how Hoffman negotiates

an American identity. Maxine Hong Kingston’s conflation between her

identity and a mythical Chinese figure illustrate her desire to seek connectivity

with others by reinventing herself, a fusion between past and future feminine

voices. Richard Rodriguez constructs his American identity as a consequence

of how others perceive him. Thus his movement of oneself as another

illustrates a more implicit vision of hybridity whereas Gloria Anzaldúa

challenges how others perceive her by promoting, even flaunting her identity

as a multi-subjective image of many different othered images. The writers I

have selected, a cross-sectional sampling of North America’s polyglot cultural

makeup, address difference and hybrid subjectivity as an important process of

how identity is shaped within a cosmopolitan frame. My thesis chapters

therefore explore the different forms of hybridized identity that surface in their

writing. These writers illustrate how hybrid spaces are continually formed

through processes of code-switching between culture(s) and language(s). It is a

negotiation of in-between spaces of identification with zones of conflict and

creative connectivity. The central aim of this thesis is to privilege those

29

instances where creative connectivity emerges from code-switching and

hybridized identification.

The Selected Works

The seven writers I focus upon: Antonio D’Alfonso

(Italian/Quebecker), Dany Laferrière (Haitian/Quebecker), Hiromi Goto

(Japanese/Canadian), Eva Hoffman (Polish/American), Maxine Hong

Kingston (Chinese/American), Richard Rodriguez (Mexican/American) and

Gloria Anzaldúa (Mexican/American) address individual identity as an

interrogation of personal stakes in what constitutes hybrid subjectivity for

them inside competitive notions of authenticity. The slashes I employ are

meant to illustrate connections and divisions between different cultural codes.

Connectivity between different cultures creates hybrid or impure patterns of

in-between spaces. However this impurity creates new forms out of old

cultural codes, the essence of hybridized identification. This impurity

resonates as a new voice positioned inside mainstream dominant codes,

continually shifting and recreating its spaces and its voices. This creative

process implies originality, therefore change. And all forms of change come

with specific tensions. Thus, through their particular styles of communicative

exchange and code-switching the writers I have selected illustrate hybrid in-

between identity as a varying site of conflict and creative connectivity.

It is in their insistence on something new and their desire for a kind of

communicative hybrid foreplay that I find value. The particular forms of

hybridity that surface in the selective works are therefore the foundation of

30

how I explore creative connectivity. The creative aspects of hybridity offer a

more fluid vision of subjectivity and identity negotiation. They also provide an

interesting and flexible vantage point from which to understand differences in

self while negotiating our differences with others. It must ultimately be a

reciprocal and therefore respectful path of negotiation because it is reciprocity

and respect that pave the way for more powerful forms of creative

connectivity. Each work evokes hybridized identity differently (through

differences in culture, language, race, even sexual orientation) so I do not

compare or contrast these works. What I focus on is how code-switching and

hybridized identification are necessary, even natural, aspects of negotiation in

these works and on a broader scale in how today’s globalized cultures meet

and greet each other.

How each writer approaches creative connectivity is therefore the

converging point between these works. The creative aspect is distinctly

baroque in each work. Looking outside religious aspects of baroque forms in

literature that surfaced in the 17th century, I am interested in how

characteristics of the baroque form surface in different degrees in the selected

works. In her paper “Global Baroque: Antonio D’Alfonso’s Fabrizio’s

Passion” (the English translation of Avril ou l’anti-passion), Lianne Moyes

extrapolates on the many definitions of baroque. Her reference to baroque as

an art-historic form, more precisely its association “with ambiguity,

uncertainty, incongruity, contradiction, transformation, multiple perspective,

illusion, surface play, hybrid form, ornament, passion, and excess” come up

31

again and again (in varying degrees) in the works I focus on (Moyes 1). I

italicize these terms in the following paragraphs to illustrate these baroque

form(s) present in each work.

Of the seven writers I have selected, Hiromi Goto, Antonio D’Alfonso

and Dany Laferrière code-switch between cultures and languages inside

English and French Canadian spaces. In Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms and in

D’Alfonso’s Avril ou l’anti-passion, these writers negotiate and create hybrid

subjectivity between their protagonists’ female Japanese/English Canadian

voices and Italian/French Canadian voice (respectively) by intertwining past

cultural and linguistic codes (Bhabha’s notion of pedagogy) with present

cultural realities (as performative). Dany Laferrière’s Comment faire l’amour

avec un nègre sans se fatiguer does not take the same linguistic approach as

Goto and D’Alfonso. He plays with language rather than moving between

linguistic codes, however his movement between cultural codes and re-

scripting of racial lines interpellates Bhabha`s notions of pedagogy and the

performative. In different ways, these writers illustrate connectivity between

cultural codes as a defining aspect of being Canadian. As previously suggested

the hyphens I employ are meant to draw attention to how the protagonists in

these works are simultaneously connected to, and divided by, their negotiation

between different markers of language and culture (see Smith and Watson).

Consequently, each writer’s focus of hybrid space is determined by the degree

of movement assigned between linguistic and cultural codes. In many

instances, code-switching, a play between languages and cultural codes

32

parallels sexual play in these works. This form of play shifts between distinctly

baroque spaces of ambiguity, uncertainty, incongruity, transformation,

multiple perspective and passion. These writers offer diverse glimpses of

hybridized identification, of different minority groups negotiating hybridity

inside Canada’s two official languages. Goto’s writing as an English

Canadian/Japanese writer sits alongside D’Alfonso’s work as a French

Canadian/Italian writer while Laferrière’s vision of identity may be understood

as a creative Pan-American writer weaving a larger circle of connectivity

between cultural codes.

Although Goto and D’Alfonso narrate their stories as works of fiction,

some aspects of their narrative style are autobiographical in form; personal

truths surface from fictional details. Goto re-invents personal truth by re-

telling her grandmother’s story through her protagonist Naoe. The old woman

in Goto’s work is the symbolic carrier of oral tradition. Therefore as storyteller

Naoe is also the transmitter of cultural and linguistic codes. Her granddaughter

Murasaki, the recipient of Naoe’s stories is the symbolic trope of Japanese

culture for future generations. Goto’s code-switching between English and

Japanese illustrates Murasaki’s education in both languages. This movement is

also a marker of Murasaki’s growing bicultural and bilingual identity. Goto

was born in Japan however she came to Canada when she was three years old.

Like her protagonist Murasaki, she was raised in Nanton, Alberta where her

father had a mushroom farm. While Goto labels Chorus of Mushrooms a work

of fiction, threads of her personal story are woven into the characters she

33

creates. As such, some of her illustrations about identity may be understood as

the performative Bhabha speaks of, a re-imagination of Goto’s future

Canadian space inside a past Japanese cultural context.

Similarly D’Alfonso’s protagonist Fabrizio is modeled after the writer.

As a second generation Italian immigrant, D’Alfonso (like his protagonist) was

born and raised in Montreal. Fabrizio’s vision of language(s) and culture(s)

mirror D’Alfonso’s. Code-switching in this work is an expression of desire to

move between different cultural and linguistic expressions and codes. Thus

protagonist (like writer), identifies as Italian and Quebecker, traveling between

Italian, French, and English codes to assert his particular hybrid identity. Like

Goto, D’Alfonso’s work is fiction. It is D’Alfonso’s public education in

English and French schools, his publications in three languages, along with his

communication in Italian at home that illustrate similarities between writer and

protagonist and their philosophy about culture(s) and language(s). The

splitting process between pedagogy and the performative Bhabha offers in his

discussion about nation spaces is quite palpable in D’Alfonso’s narrative

where past Italian markers converge with present Québec cultural codes.

Moreover his writing promotes the type of code-switching and hybridized

identification I value, one that is (performative) playful and (pedagogical)

meaningful. It is a connective model of identity and community belonging for

future immigrants and their host citizens.

In this regard, Montreal’s cultural space has a unique voice in Canada.

It motivates immigrants to live as trilingual citizens for two reasons. First, they

34

must juggle between French and English zones to establish a sense of

community belonging. Montreal is perhaps the only city in Canada where

French and English co-exist (depending on the neighborhoods) as dominant

languages. You cannot always anticipate when someone will switch between

these languages on the streets, in stores, restaurants, bars, etc. This movement

between French and English is part of Montreal’s daily routine. It may exist in

other parts of Canada (Ottawa for instance and other Franco-Canadian areas

like New Brunswick and even places in Alberta) however French in such parts

remains hidden under the guise of a minority second language. Montreal

seems to stand alone as a city where Canada’s two official languages occupy

dominant spaces. As a consequence, immigrants living in Montreal must

create stronger nuclear inner communities with family and friends from their

cultural origins differently than their immigrant neighbors in cities like

Toronto and Vancouver because they are negotiating identity between two

dominant languages. Citizens from other cosmopolitan cities in Canada do not

struggle between two official languages in the same way as Montrealers since

these cities are not bound by provincial language laws. While any clustering of

cultural groups can promote some form of ghettos, such grouping also has

value. It creates solidarity and it allows people to protect and promote specific

cultural and linguistic codes (especially second generation immigrants who

otherwise risk losing ties with their codes of origin). In Montreal, immigrant

neighborhoods would have a more difficult time functioning (for the most

part) by isolating themselves from either their English or French Canadian

35

neighborhoods. So they are faced with the challenge of traveling between two

dominant languages while holding on to their language of origin.

D’Alfonso’s vision of Montreal as a trilingual space is therefore an

interesting and unique model of code-switching and hybridized identification.

His work promotes linguistic and cultural hybridization as a successful and

artistic model for immigrants who travel and negotiate their identities between

Canada’s two official languages. Consequently such Canadian immigrants

who are trilingual are, in my opinion, equipped to communicate more

creatively than those who are bilingual or unilingual. For this reason,

D’Alfonso’s protagonist Fabrizio is a source of fascination and contradiction

because he cannot identify with just two cultural and linguistic spaces. Hybrid

spaces in D’Alfonson’s work focus more on creative connectivity rather than

zones of conflict. D’Alfonso’s illustration of Fabrizio is provocatively close to

the writer’s feelings of dislocation which lead him to promote hybridized

identification. These issues surface in his writing, essays and poetry.

Like D’Alfonso, Dany Laferrière’s male protagonist in Comment faire

l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatigué translates identity inside Montreal’s

cultural spaces. Laferrière comes to Montreal in his early twenties and he

spends a few years as a single black immigrant in the city before returning to

Haiti and marrying. Although the reader cannot and should not make parallels

between the writer and his protagonist Vieux’s sexual experiences in Montreal,

it is possible to read Vieux’s parody of black and white sexuality as an

indicator of Laferrière’s desire to collapse stereotypes. He does not negotiate

36

hybrid subjectivity by traveling between linguistic codes. His code-switching

is more implicitly seen through relationships in his story which focus on

experiences between a French-speaking immigrant and white young women

from Westmount (an English neighborhood in Montreal). His exploration of

hybridized subjectivity is also recognizable in the particular ways he toys with

black and white cultural stereotypes to shift racially based power plays (what I

understand as Bhabha’s pedagogy) between black men and white women.

Moreover his musical and literary references provide a baroque transformation

as he juggles between sexual and artistic spaces to tell his story. As parody,

Laferrière’s narrative of sexuality between white women and one black man

may be interpreted as a movement or splitting process between Bhabha’s

pedagogy and the performative. This movement empowers the black man’s

voice and his cultural space. Literature, music and writing set the creative

backdrop for seductive and pedagogical play. A transformation occurs in those

instances where seductive ploys and plays reverse black and white stereotypes.

Laferrière’s writing style enters zones of Baroque contradiction and passion

promoting sexual excess as a means of subverting dominant white voice(s).

The underlying satirical messages are performative spaces. Laferrière

extrapolates meaning across racial and sexual borders by negotiating identity

in Pan-American terms rather than national terms based on one country.

Racial and sexual borders as well as issues of code-switching and

hybridized identification differ in style and in geographic spaces in the

American works I have selected. First, Anzaldúa, Hong Kingston, Hoffman

37

and Rodriguez narrate personal life stories. Female empowerment is a

dominant theme in Anzaldúa’s autohistoria Borderlands/La Frontera. She

brings together geographic, sexual, historical, religious, cultural and linguistic

spaces to illustrate a baroque multi perspective vision of identity and a baroque

desire for transformation. Anzaldúa’s discourse is wrapped inside U.S.-

Mexican border theory issues. Thus hybrid negotiation and code-switching are

individually and collectively addressed (either implicitly or explicitly in the

selected works) as a contestation against hegemonic politics, language and

culture. The shift between pedagogy and the performative in Anzaldúa’s work

is particularly dominant. Her literary style (a mixture of autobiography,

history, spirituality, sexuality, poetry and prose) mirrors her mosaic vision of

subjectivity. She rejects the fixity of racial, sexual, cultural, linguistic, spiritual

and spatial borders thus claiming a multi-subjective voice. I therefore

understand Anzaldúa’s mix of literary and linguistic codes as baroque and

surrealist. Reminiscent of René Magritte, Anzaldúa illustrates how identity

construction mimics a surrealist shift between fickleness of image versus

reality. The fickleness of image is tied to past collective historical cultural

codes while her desire to claim multiple subjectivities is an individual

exploration, shaping her narrative as performative. Her negotiation between

cultural and linguistic codes illustrates her pedagogical process as well as

desire for connectivity which frames non translation in her work as acts of

knowing versus realities of not knowing. Language expressions, like cultural

codes, have symbolic interpretations as well as literal meanings. Non

38

translation is a powerful tool of contestation in this work because it keeps the

reader guessing about the layered more symbolic interpretations possible in the

meaning-making process. Through her linguistic hybrid writing style,

Anzaldúa claims her hybrid multiple subjectivities. However she does not

always reveal intimate meaning to all readers. By privileging some readers and

excluding others, she toys with the readers’ ability to know and to understand

her intimately. Moreover by refusing identification inside one linguistic or

cultural zone, Anzaldúa mocks fixed labels. She simultaneously destabilizes

her process of self-identity as she continually reincarnates herself inside

historical, cultural, religious, sexual and linguistic spaces – hybrid, baroque

and surrealist.

Not as radical in its address of feminine empowerment, Hong

Kingston’s The Woman Warrior re-spins traditional Chinese legends and

narrates them as Baroque, multi-perspective and transforming. She modernizes

the female Chinese experience inside an American scope of feminine

subjectivity. She mediates her desire to be translated as a modern, empowered

Americanized/Chinese immigrant by re-scripting herself as Fa MuLan, a

mythical Chinese woman warrior. As a second generation Chinese immigrant

woman born and raised in the United States, Hong Kingston must negotiate

identity inside traditional Chinese cultural codes which do not empower

women. Moreover, as a visibly different immigrant woman her challenges

shift between being Chinese, female, and immigrant. If she defines herself

through one space, she feels negatively othered in other spaces. Therefore her

39

conflation of myth and personal story may be interpreted as a prescriptive

form of splitting between Bhabha’s pedagogy and the performative, as desire

for empowerment outside walls that negatively confine her inside one cultural

space. Hong Kingston also reframes her Americanized Chinese identity by

re-scripting the identity of her ancestral female ghosts. By retelling their

stories, she gives them a voice they did not have while they were living. At the

same time, she empowers her voice through such a retelling and a re-scripting

of the feminine Chinese voice. What emerges from this re-scripting is a

Chinese/American feminine voice, hybridized because of how she re-

negotiates the identity of these other women in her family. Underlying this

retelling process, chords of discrimination echo within her Chinese spaces.

Thus Hong Kingston’s restructuring of the Chinese/American feminine

narrative voice and her conflation of myth and reality are important tools of

negotiation to empower her Chinese/American voice.

The notion of hybrid identity in Hoffman’s Lost in Translation and

Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory life narratives are overshadowed by traumatic

zones of conflict and experience. Therefore creative connectivity and

hybridized identification in these works are more complex. Like Anzaldúa,

their personal stories are narrated as surreal and baroque lived experiences.

Surreal because of the way these writers move between the image of their

public American worlds and the realities of their childhood private (Polish and

Mexican respectively) spaces. Baroque because of how incongruity and

contradiction affect their process of transformation. I interpret some of their

40

difficulties as trappings of the American Dream. Their American cultural

reality dominates, even dictates, how they must leave behind certain aspects of

their cultural origins in order to embrace adopted American space(s). However

an American education affords these writers a more successful entry as

American citizens. For these writers, academic success equals American

integration. Their American education is a tool of empowerment to dim

tensions they experience juggling between the spaces of their cultural origins

and their adopted American one. Both writers illustrate difficulties they

experience suppressing or shifting ties with their cultural and linguistic origins.

For Rodriguez, moving between Spanish and English and being

bilingual signal confusion. Hoffman struggles with her desire to learn English

as intimately as she speaks Polish. Their respective longing(s) to seek

connectivity between the different cultures and languages they inhabit creep

into their narrative voices suggesting they cannot avoid hybridized

identification. Hoffman and Rodriguez converge on one point in their process

of identity negotiation. Their vision of being American means sacrificing or

leaving behind aspects of their Polish and Mexican cultural codes. Mastering

English and embracing an American vision of cultural identity is a

consequence of their upbringing and childhood experiences. The trauma

narrative of Hoffman’s parents and Rodriguez’s repressed homosexuality play

a crucial role in how these writers negotiate self-hood in less hybrid terms than

the other writers. Thus their desire for American connectivity masks the hybrid

41

aspects of their identity inside baroque spaces of incongruity and

contradiction.

Tensions surface when Hoffman’s Polish vision of life, love and

culture clash with her Canadian and American experiences. Her adaptation

process in North America is further complicated because of her parents’

traumatic life experiences in war torn Poland. What surfaces from their trauma

narrative overlaps and becomes intertwined with Hoffman’s narrative. Their

story represents Hoffman’s past and it is therefore part of her process of

pedagogy. Her North American experiences collide with her poetic nostalgia

for a Polish life she can never recapture. Such instances in her narrative

illustrate her splitting process and the performative aspects of her experiences.

Moreover a heightened awareness of her parents’ suffering means she

experiences their suffering as a belated pain. The result is a splintering of

images in how she views herself and how she narrates her experiences. As she

moves towards a more American/Polish version of herself, she grapples

between baroque feelings of ambiguity, uncertainty, incongruity, and

contradiction. Hoffman’s personal story, a meta-narrative of sorts, is further

complicated and complex because her experiences are forever welded inside

the trauma narrative of her parents. Her story is divided into three parts:

Paradise, Exile, and The New World. In Paradise, she describes how she

experiences and therefore understands her childhood in Poland. In Exile, she

describes her first impressions as an immigrant in Canada. Finally, in The New

World she speaks of her symbolic entry as an American. Hoffman’s story

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shifts in a nonlinear narrative between her childhood and adult experiences.

Her nonlinear narrative style illustrates the impact her past Polish spaces and

experiences have on how she negotiates her present North American identity.

Hoffman’s first immigrant experience in Canada is not a positive one. Her

subsequent American experiences suggest that this period of her adult life is

less conflicted. Hoffman’s academic accomplishments provide her with a

stronger image of herself as an immigrant; however, her struggle to define and

negotiate her identity between different cultural and linguistic codes continues

to haunt her. I was quickly seduced by Hoffman’s poetic writing style. Moving

between melancholic threads of her Polish memories, she describes her

Canadian and American experiences as a period of questions, of conflicted

negotiations between cultural codes. In the end, she seems to accept that she

cannot avoid a hybridized identification. Lines of division between her Polish

and American identities become bridges as she comes to terms with the

knowledge that many aspects of her Polish culture frame her American voice,

ultimately a hybridized space.

An acceptance of hybrid spaces is less visible in how Rodriguez

negotiates between his Mexican and American cultural worlds. As a second

generation immigrant, Rodriguez’s first goal is seeking identification as an

American. Born and raised in California, he quickly learns that speaking

English fluently is a key element of success and entry as an American. His

views against bilingual education point to his scepticism about successfully

learning, preserving, and living between different languages. Moreover his

43

dark skin, a constant negative reminder of his otherness, suggests that

academic success is a tool of empowerment against feelings of marginality. I

understand his desire for an Americanized identity (especially as he narrates it

in Hunger of Memory) as a product of how he negatively understands bilingual

education which differs from my views of multilingual language education, a

point-of-view I address in my conclusion. Rodriguez’s experiences and

narrative are contained inside the social and cultural climate of American life

in the 1960s, an era of great counter-cultural revolution. As a result, how he

chooses to publicly share his personal and public journey surface as

fragmented threads of a latent hybrid voice he cannot escape. Losing his

intimate ties to Spanish at a very young age means that Rodriguez’s position

and even point of view differ from the perspective of American Mexicans still

speaking Spanish and therefore fighting for bilingual education. Moreover

containing and concealing his homosexual identity during his youth and early

adulthood means that Rodriguez’s personal voice is masked before his public.

He does not write publicly about this alienation from self, rather he speaks of

his alienation from family as a prescriptive tool to deal with some of his inner

conflicts and suffering. However this sharing process creates a great rift

between Rodriguez and his parents, particularly his mother who views his

sharing of family experience as a betrayal. Thus I understand Rodriguez’s

private pain (language, closeness with his family, even his closeted

homosexuality) as latent longings of a hybrid existence he cannot completely

claim. Rodriguez writes with passion however his tone remains professional.

44

He frames his experiences as formal essays, offering arguments and

concluding comments that rationally convince readers of his choices.

Rodriguez therefore stands alone in my selection of writers as the voice who

reluctantly embraces hybridized identification. Readers witness aspects of

Rodriguez’s hybrid voice in his works after Hunger of Memory (the focus in

this thesis). His narrative style and personalized essays are, I believe, a

symbolic illustration of the structure Rodriguez seeks in his personal life. I

understand his closeted homosexuality in the same way I read his professional

writing style, as a tool to mask his inner emotions, ones he is not open to,

perhaps uncomfortable, sharing with readers. What is clear is how his journey

of identity negotiation and therefore his process of code-switching between

cultures and languages are much more conflicted in his work than in the other

selected works.

While this thesis focuses on the value of code-switching and the

creative connectivity that comes from hybridized identification in the selected

works, there is some degree of tension and conflict arising from code-

switching between cultural and linguistic codes in all the works. D’Alfonso’s

vision may be traced to the Italian model of small space and a long history.

However his model of hybridized identification may be the most positive

example in my selection of works. The structure of family love, exoticism of

romantic love, language and dialect, and religion are dominant factors in

tensions his protagonist experiences as an Italian immigrant in Montreal.

Similar structures surface in Goto’s narrative. However in her story, the focus

45

is on reclaiming lost cultural and linguistic codes. Laferrière’s Pan-American

view of identity focuses less on local points of connectivity such as traditions,

religion, language and dialect. However by conflating sexual and geographic

spaces he Haitianizes his local Montreal spaces on his terms. Such a

conflation of spaces allows him a distinctly baroque identification and

connection, multi perspective in meaning. Anzaldúa’s resistance to hegemonic

language and culture places her vision of identity alongside similar globalized

lines of reference as Laferrière. However her desire for identification goes

beyond conflation of sexual and geographic borders. She contests accepted

codes of belonging/identification along historical, political, cultural, sexual,

religious, and linguistic borders, wishing to re-script hybridized identification

as an artistic form, grandiose, baroque and multi-perspective.

Hoffman also juggles between borders. Not as multi-perspective as

Anzaldúa, her struggles shift between her Polish homeland and her adopted

North American spaces. Hong Kingston seeks identification between the

cultural Chinese spaces her family imposes upon her and the American colors

she was born, raised and educated inside, in California. Contrarily, Rodriguez

leaves behind local spaces of identification. Also born and raised in California,

he moves away from his Mexican culture at a very young age to embrace

national markers of an Americanized identity. Rodriguez also distances

himself from the language of his cultural origins, what he refers to as private

space. However all the writers I have selected illustrate public space as

pedagogy and personal space as performative. In those moments where there

46

are tensions or connectivities between these spaces we witness hybridized

identity as zones of creative intimacy or tension.

Code-Switching

Creative intimacy or tensions that surfaces because of linguistic code-

switching are an important aspect of how three of the writers I have selected

negotiate hybrid subjectivity: Anzaldúa, Goto and to a lesser degree

D’Alfonso. Anzaldúa punctuates her English with many words, sentences,

passages and poems in Spanish, often un-translated. Her tone is polemical in

as much as her writing is surrealist in its narrative form. By refusing to

translate, her words become privileged expressions, inviting some readers and

excluding others. Less polemical in tone, Goto’s writing style resembles

Anzaldúa’s because she also chooses when and how she privileges her readers’

meaning-making process by inserting Japanese words and sentences that

cannot be intimately understood by readers who do not understand Japanese.

Anzaldúa and Goto are deliberate in how they include and exclude readers.

Language and how we understand intimate meaning is sometimes misleading

in these works. Their particular form of un-translated code-switching is a

critical aspect of how these women wish to define their narrative voices

outside white mainstream subjectivity.

D’Alfonso also employs linguistic code-switching however his style is

more playful, suggesting that this movement between languages and cultural

codes is a natural consequence of growing up in Montreal, a city where

Canada’s two official languages move between political and cultural codes

47

differently than in any other Canadian city. Thus a hybrid communication and

bilingual, even trilingual meaning-making process is explored in D’Alfonso’s

work as a welcome(d) process of splitting between Bhabha’s discourses of

pedagogy and the performative. Unlike Anzaldúa and Goto, his narrative

illustrates linguistic code-switching as a necessary, even natural aspect of

cosmopolitan life more than a polemical tool to contest dominant mainstream

voices.

In her autobiography, Hoffman grapples with issues of language,

dealing with the challenges of moving away from Polish towards a more

American skin. She does not employ linguistic code-switching to contest

mainstream culture or its English language. However she does pepper some of

her American experiences with Polish words. I read her negotiation for an

American identity and her particular model of linguistic hybridity as a poetic

process. Her language style is seductive, emotional and always nostalgic.

Unlike D’Alfonso’s more open easy-going representation of Italian/French

Canadian hybridity, she demonstrates her Polish/American hybrid subjectivity

as one dominated by American spaces. For Hoffman, speaking and knowing

English intimately are akin to being American in an authentic way. Polish

becomes an encoded a priori historical referential base, defining her adoption

of English as performative space, a necessary construction of an Americanized

Polish identity. Like Rodriguez she views her mastery of the English language

as a vital tool of recognition and entry as an American citizen.

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Rodriguez and Hoffman privilege code-switching implicitly. These

writers illustrate hybrid subjectivity as a Proustian dance – an evocation of

past experience in a present context. The dance becomes hybridized as the

music shifts between different codes of identification. Past experience for

Hoffman is layered inside the trauma narrative of her parents. Rodriguez’s

negotiation of identity is marred by choices that erase his intimate ties to the

Spanish language. Moreover I understand his delayed coming out as a

homosexual as a traumatic event. Both writers strive to occupy spaces inside

mainstream American academia. Their stories may be read as how-to guides of

becoming successful American academics. Their desire for Americanized

success pushes them to privilege English and academic study. They view these

elements as key aspects of their American adoption process and their desire to

live the American dream. I view this desire for inclusion inside mainstream

American culture as a clash with their desire for a bilingual identity.

However Hoffman does not assimilate into American culture in the

same way as Rodriguez. Her process of Americanization remains interwoven

inside Polish codes. Both writers’ particular process of code-switching

between languages and cultures result in tensions they struggle to eliminate.

Thus their adoption of English as their primary language and their desire for

success in their academic careers may be read as prescriptive processes that

soothe their otherwise fractured Polish and Mexican (respectively) identities.

Their autobiographical truth and their subsequent recording of lived

experiences are influenced by the ways they are taught to act inside their social

49

and political environments. They cannot ignore or forget about their cultural

origins. Thus they must ultimately face and embrace their hybridized

identification, albeit in more implicit terms than Anzaldúa, Goto or D’Alfonso.

Hong Kingston’s autobiography is also implicit in its illustration of code-

switching. She negotiates her Chinese/American feminine subjectivity by

code-switching between myth and reality to negotiate her identity. Laferrière’s

parody of racial stereotypes is another implicit form of code-switching. His

protagonist code-switches between racial stereotypes and defines masculine

subjectivity on his terms. The common thread between all the writers I focus

on (in varying forms) is in their layered and superimposed patterns of hybrid

subjectivity. Hybrid identification in the works is a large patchwork quilt.

Every patch tells a different culturally coded story and sewn together these

patches form a hybrid cover of creative connectivity.

In the works I have selected this notion of culturally coded patches

surfaces through each writer’s storytelling approach. As Sidonie Smith and

Julia Watson point out in Reading Autobiography: A Guide For Interpreting

Life Narratives, “we [need to] approach self-referential writing as an

intersubjective process that occurs within the writer/reader pact, rather than as

a true-or-false story…[where] the emphasis of reading shifts from assessing

and verifying knowledge to observing processes of communicative exchange

and understanding” (13). Thus I focus on how the protagonists in the selected

works, real or invented, propel their identities as hybrid baroque art forms, re-

painting their movements between different cultural and linguistic canvases

50

with newer, more inventive strokes. Creativity plays a critical role in how

these writers renegotiate patterns of identity. In keeping with the

heterogeneous and heteroglossic North American populations of today, the

works I have selected represent a small but significant sampling of immigrant

processes of communicative exchange, varied and complex in their literary

forms. These works showcase how a mutually beneficial relationship between

different linguistic and cultural worlds is possible. However as Wilson Harris

notes in his interview with Fred D’Aguiar, such relationships are “very

fragile” like a “rain forest … [they can] be devastated overnight” (qtd. in Nasta

39). It begins, by refusing to live, in Harris’s words “in a world which

compartmentalizes cultures and people” (38). Like Harris, the voices on the

peripheries or the border zones do not identify with one culture. Rather, they

move between the spaces of a dominant linguistic and cultural center and its

peripheral spaces. Over time, this movement increases in frequency as they

learn, adapt to, and adopt, new cultural and linguistic codes. However such in-

between movement also impacts the center and how it re-creates its cultural

and linguistic spaces because as Wilson states “there exists a profound

relationship between all societies” (37-38). This movement may be understood

as Bhabha’s pedagogy and the performative, as (re)imaginings of subjectivity,

as another aspect of creative connectivity between different cultural codes.

Such movement encourages, in my opinion, a greater focus on multilingual

communication and an escape from marginalization, when it is framed as a

Ricœurian mapping of soi-même comme un autre. In psychiatrist Frank

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Johnson’s words, it may be understood as a kind of “social construction which

is symbolically and signally created between and among social beings” (qtd. in

Eakin 76-77). I understand this relationship or social construction between

social beings as a creative space of discovery.

What Has Not Been Done and How I Bridge the Gap

Albert Einstein said: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind

of thinking we used when we created them." To facilitate newer patterns of

thinking about how immigrants and host citizens integrate more effectively

into each other’s lives, I view hybrid identification as a necessary process of

creative connectivity and code-switching between cultures and languages. To

promote this idea, this thesis picks up from Catherine Leclerc’s Ph.D. topic:

Des langues en partage? Cohabitation du français et de l’anglais en

littérature contemporaine. Like Leclerc, my thesis addresses bilingualism or

plurilingualism inside a literary context. However my perspective is immigrant

focused. Therefore how language(s) come into contact with each other is an

important aspect of how I address immigration issues. « Parlant, à l’échelle

communautaire, une langue qui n’est pas la langue nationale, ces groups

[d’immigrants] doivent passer par une langue véhiculaire pour participer à la

vie de leur société » (Leclerc 2). Entry in society’s majority cultural and

linguistic arena requires effective communication by host and immigrant. As

Leclerc points outs « [d] ans le nouvel ordre économique international, la

connaissance de plusieurs langues ouvre des portes, même pour les locuteurs

dont la première langue est une langue dominante » (2) Like Leclerc, I speak

52

in favor of the usage of more than one language inside literary, community and

professional circles. As she points out, switching between languages in literary

works is a challenge and a risk. I share her view that literature offers

researchers an interesting frame of reference about multilingual narration.

Such a narrative tool is « une esthétique de la contestation (Leclerc 6) … il

s’affirmerait comme principe dialogique … contre la dictature de l’Un »

(Sherry Simon qtd. in Leclerc (6). Where my focus differs from Leclerc is in

the way I address code-switching as creative connectivity and as an active and

intimate engagement between self and other, more specifically in relation to

immigrants who travel between languages and cultural codes to reconstruct

their identities. Moreover Leclerc’s term co-habitation of languages addresses

the degree of movement between languages as an indicator of « une stricte

hiérarchisation» (Leclerc 6). While I acknowledge that the amount of

movement between languages is an important indicator of the degree of

contestation of language hegemony, it is also a tool of communication to

illustrate the natural movement between languages immigrants adopt/adapt in

host countries as they renegotiate their identity. As Leclerc points out, literary

works that code-switch between languages illustrates a desire by such writers

to write for « un public qui est lui-même plurilingue » (12).

As an English teacher in Québec City, I am aware of how important it

is that today’s youth master (intimately learn) English. Within an economic

world context English remains the dominant language of communication.

Leclerc illustrates, as I wish to, how co-habitation, what I term code-switching

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between language(s) in literature has positive value. « Le pari soutenu dans

cette thèse est que la littérature pourrait s’avérer riche d’enseignement quant

aux types de rapport entre les langues susceptibles de se développer à la faveur

de ce climat doublement favorable au plurilinguisme » (3). The rapport entre

les langues Leclerc speaks of is where my thesis picks up. I also focus more on

the creative value of such an exchange. Moreover my thesis explores code-

switching, creative connectivity and negotiation of identity in immigrant

populations. Immigrants who wish to successfully integrate into their adopted

countries cannot simply identify with one culture or one language. Such

people continually travel inside hybridized spaces of identification.

In any dynamic where people speak more than one language, live

inside more than one cultural code, code-switching is present. Thus literature

affords us the opportunity to understand the value of such code-switching. It

also provides us with different examples of the tensions and conflicts code-

switching produces which remain for the most part creative. For instance,

Leclerc mentions how easily people are seduced by exotic elements of

difference. « Comprendre la langue de l’autre et s’en servir pour dialoguer

s’avérait moins important que de succomber à son exotisme » (5). I would

therefore argue that code-switching (or as Leclerc labels it co-habitation)

needs to move beyond this label of exotic appeal. What is required is “an

active engagement with the horizons of the culture in which those terms have

meaning” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin qtd. in Leclerc 6). More importantly,

my thesis also grounds its illustrations of code-switching by validating non-

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translation, to destabilize, or as Leclerc labels it « fait éclater toute notion

d’une langue unique » (Leclerc 15). In Chapter Three I therefore concentrate

on how “the absence of translation has a particular kind of interpretative [and

creative] function” because “the absence of explanation is the first sign of

distinctiveness ... it is an endorsement ... a recognition that the message event

... has full authority in the process of cultural and linguistic intersection”

(Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 64). In the literary works of Anzaldúa, Goto,

and D’Alfonso I understand creative connectivity and their particular non-

translation techniques of code-switching as an illustration of how “alien world

views might come closer if their linguistic structures were somehow meshed”

(67). While most post-colonial literature focuses on code-switching in

Caribbean or in African literature, the originality of this thesis is in its

illustration of migrant literatures in North America that focus on code-

switching in their works. Therefore in my exploration of code-switching I

move in a different direction from Leclerc’s study of language co-habitation in

literary works. Leclerc focuses on Quebec, Franco-Canadian and European

works to explore language co-habitation. The value of this thesis is in its

focuses on code-switching in immigrant literature. I therefore do not translate

French quotations into English throughout my thesis. This is a deliberate

choice I make to illustrate my desire to code-switch between the languages I

speak.

My thesis is also heavily indebted to Chantal Zabus’ work in The

African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African

55

Europhone Novel published in1991. The “process of fundamental social and

cultural change” in African society Zabus speaks of is also a process of change

that affects immigrants and immigrant writers here in North America. In the

words of Vladimir Nabokov: “Not only style but subject undergoes a horrible

bleeding and distortion when translated into another tongue” (qtd. in Zabus i).

Zabus’ work is a comparative study of the hybridization of the English and

French languages in African literatures. I am interested in focusing on varying

forms of “palimpsests beneath whose scriptural surface can be traced

imperfectly erased remnants of the source language, the author’s mother

tongue” because they are a useful point of reference in examining code-

switching in the works I have selected (v). Her use of code-switching refers to

a switch “between the European and African language and the languages in

contact” as “acts of identity” (6). The works I have selected explore this bridge

between languages in a similar way. The desire to make meaning “without

resorting to translation” is for instance a key aspect of how some of the writers

I focus upon play with contact between languages in their works (7). I

understand this hybridization as a shifting of spaces between who we are

becoming versus who we were.

This shifting space I speak of between cultural and linguistic worlds

illustrates (in similar terms as Zabus’ reference of the post-colonial writer) the

immigrant writer’s “desire to be both truly local and universal, to reclaim and

rehabilitate the indigenous languages, while seeking viability” (vii). Even if a

process of assimilation (Richard Rodriguez for instance) closes this gap or the

56

“relationship between dominant and dominated language” it does not erase the

voice of “authorial, imaginative consciousness” (14) In Rodriguez’s writing,

this is witnessed as “the result of a transformation; the transmutation of literary

language by its social objectives” (15). Rodriguez’s autobiographical narrative

focuses on the merits of monolingual living “in a situation of [cultural more

than linguistic] diglossia” (15). Contrarily, Gloria Anzaldúa steps inside “a

situation of acute diglossia in a multilingual [and culturally hybrid] state” of

mind (16). These two writers offer a polarized view of hybridization and code-

switching. Rodriguez’s desire for full American citizenship is also an

illustration of his desire to “make the foreign language” his own thus

“subverting its foreignness” (3-4). Contrarily, Anzaldúa’s desire to code-

switch between Spanish and English bridges the gap between mother tongue

and other tongue as it illustrates her contestation of any authorial cultural or

linguistic codes which prevent her from embracing the many voices and spaces

she occupies. As a sixth generation descendant of Basque and Spanish

explorers, Anzaldúa is not in the same class of immigrants as the other writers.

However the collective past histories she speaks of in her narrative provide her

an immigrant perspective that is important in how I explore hybrid subjectivity

and the immigrant experience. Moreover her use of code-switching and

hybridization dominates all aspects of how she translates identity. She is

therefore an important example in my exploration of connectivity between

cultures and languages.

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The other writers I focus on fall somewhere between these two points

of identification. Each writer embodies (to some degree) Zabus’ vision of The

African Palimpsest in their narrative. Today’s “university-trained

intelligentsia” has grown even more than it had when Zabus published this

work on code-switching (ii). What remains true is the significance of “social

change” Zabus speaks of and its many “ethical, psychological” problems (ii).

Moreover, the challenge lies in how a dominant society can accept the reality

that “culture change always involves language change ... that culture contact,

even in the form of the notorious culture clash, always leads to the mode of

linguistic hybridization” (ii). While Zabus’s work refers to hybridization as the

process of creolization, this thesis grounds its exploration of code-switching as

a distinctly creative movement between linguistic and cultural codes.

Moreover I explore creative connectivity outside any literary forms that favor

“popular forms of speck whose peculiar lexicon, unorthodox syntax and

outlandish pronunciation make them liable to fierce criticism” (iii). This is not

to suggest that I discredit or even wish to disregard the importance and place

of vernacular speech forms. However these forms do not factor into my

approach of code-switching and how I address hybridized identification. My

exploration of code-switching is explored as an aesthetical education (see

Doris Sommer). I also understand the pedagogical, linguistic and cultural

value of hybridization and code-switching as an artistic journey. Thus my

thesis focuses on the artistic impressions we trace as we aim to define

ourselves. These drawings of ourselves may be understood as Zabus’s

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palimpsests, layered in meaning(s), shifting creatively, uniquely each time we

openly encounter and adopt another culture or language as our own. This

openness I speak of is embedded deeply inside our willingness to redefine

ourselves continually. It is in many respects an infidelity born out of an

exploration of authentic desire(s). In the selected works, the writers in question

explore this notion of authentic desires as an integral element of who they are

and how they seek belonging between cultures and languages. As a way to

summarize and validate my illustrations and observations about creative

connectivity in code-switching, hybrid identification and the negotiation of,

and the navigation between, its in-between spaces, I place great value in

multilingual education. Thus in my conclusion I will address this point,

referring to Montréal as a viable model of multilingual education.

For this reason, Sherry Simon’s work on hybridization in Hybridité

culturelle and her more recent article “Hybridity Revisited: St. Michael’s of

Mile End.” frame my approach to code-switching and how I move forward

with this topic in new forms. In this essay, Simon refers to the Mile End

neighborhood in Montreal as a site “of makeovers … [as] each new wave of

immigration washes over the plateau, it refashions the features of the

neighbourhood in its own image” (12). This essay published by Simon in 2003

illustrates the evolutionary path of Simon’s ideas on hybridity. However

Simon’s earlier views of hybridity are just as relevant in how I explore the

urban city’s hybrid identification as a site of privilege.

La ville est depuis toujours le lieu privilégié de l’hybridité. Par ses

marchés et ses places publiques, elle offre des occasions de rencontre;

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par la multiplication des circuits et des trajets, elle permet de maintenir

des différences (Hybridité culturelle 24).

As she notes, what “the concept of métissage gains in philosophical depth, it

loses in analytical precision” (“Hybridity Revisited: St. Michael’s of Mile

End.” 3). It is an “exploratory device” a building block of sorts to redesign an

existing pattern or cultural code (3). Thus hybrid is not simply an exercise in

recognizing or maintaining differences. It is about creating new spaces, new

ways of interpreting old social, cultural even linguistic sites of meaning.

« L’hybride déstabilise les certitudes et crée des effets de nouveauté et de

dissonance » (Hybridité culturelle 27). Just as “[t]he recycling of architectural

styles continually reactivates new meanings” hybridity reactivates cultures in

new ways (“Hybridity Revisited: St. Michael’s of Mile End.” 7). Host cultures

therefore become part of a regenerative process. However such processes

which shift existing meaning through architectural changes or other cultural

codes such as language, food, social values, etc. are not necessarily

comfortable zones. Yet regenerative processes can also be a form of

reconciliation. Simon describes “the coupling of Christian and Islamic

references” as provocative (7). This fits my vision of creative connectivities

between cultures and languages because the transcultural architectural images

Simon evokes express identity in new forms, as transgressed desires. Transgressed

because as Simon points out, « dans les espaces mixtes règne souvent un climat

d’anxiété » (Hybridité culturelle 27). This state of anxiété, a result of change,

is not always welcome(d), in how we define cultural and linguistic identity

inside national, local and therefore communal notions of belonging and

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citizenship. Its value come from the creative way old sites are renamed

culturally. By looking at cultures in the same context as personal relationships

we can more easily understand and accept the importance of evolution in how

we define cultural particularities. As Simon points out we need to move away

from an intercultural perspective and embrace a transcultural one, where

« interpénétration … [et] contamination » are not viewed as pejorative terms

(30). There is a perceived or real threat in any form of difference that results in

« la défiguration de la beauté indigène » (30). As immigrants enter city

spaces, the way the city’s cultural and linguistic identity has been shaped will

begin to shift and change. Notions of beauty, cuisine, even social and

religious codes shaping la beauté indigène will be affected or infected through

such encounters. Such change to institutionalized codes means that both host

and immigrant(s) are drawn into « une nouvelle norme collective ... un

ensemble de pratiques toujours en movement » (30). It is therefore

understandable that such change brings about un climat d’anxiété. However I

would argue that such anxiety should also be welcome(d). Someone once said,

“Instead of thinking outside the box, just get rid of the box” and this idea fits

here. The face of hybridized identification demands a re-shifting of old

paradigms, old cultural codes, and more fluid movements rather than a

compartmentalized understanding or recognition of spaces. Simon’s

description of Mile-End as “a place of passage, a stopover on the way to better

things” resembles my understanding of code-switching and how I address it

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through the selected works (“Hybridity Revisited: St. Michael’s of Mile End.”

12).

Today, we cannot promote immigration by closing our eyes to

differences (cultural or linguistic) these populations bring with them.

Globalization has changed our understanding of borders and therefore cultural

codes. As a result we can neither isolate ourselves from the rest of the world

nor can we negotiate cultural differences and linguistic rights as

compartmentalized issues. Host and peripheral cultures have, in my opinion,

an ethical responsibility in how they negotiate a platform of connectivity. This

process of connectivity begins with individuals. That is why my selection of

works is so diverse. It allows me to illustrate how immigrants across different

cultural and linguistic codes converge on the importance of creatively

connecting with others.

The vocabulary which has been available to describe cultural contact

has, until recently, been limited. Acculturation and assimilation are

mirror images (negative and positive) of the same process: the loss of

distinctive cultural traits to a host culture which is assumed to remain

intact and stable. Hybridity, créolité, métissage refer to forms of

mixing, each recalling a vexed history, where cultural mixing has been

associated with a legacy of violence and racism … these terms are also

unsatisfactory for the way in which they conflate process and result.

We need to distinguish the ways in which identities come together, the

values that these fusions represent, [as well as] the different forms they

take (16).

We cannot, as Simon points out, ignore other realities. « Il n’existe pas de vie

culturelle qui n’est pas adultérée par le contact, par le mélange, qui n’est pas

influencé par l’étranger » (Hybridité culturelle 35). When I speak of creative

connectivity, I think of how « l’hybride, qui définit de plus en plus les univers

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que nous habitons, est traversé de forces antagoniques » (51). However much

conflict or tension surfaces from these zones, I believe we need to remain open

to promoting connectivity and code-switching between words and worlds.

The negotiation of in-between spaces the hybrid occupies and how it is

addressed in this thesis bears resemblance to Wilson Harris’s work in Palace

of the Peacock. In this work, Harris breaks down barriers of meaning imposed

on readers. For instance, in this work we are never certain if we are reading

about dead or living characters. Moreover, Harris breaks away from linear

ideas of time and space (something that comes up in some of the works I focus

on). Such narrative techniques compel the reader to focus on imagination

rather than rationale, to view reality outside fixed linear terms. Thus engaging

the imagination to negotiate and define personal spaces as Harris does is

another important aspect of how I approach hybridized identification. Simon’s

understanding of hybridized identification corresponds to Harris’ vision of

time and space as a continuously shifting frame without linear reference. The

challenge, as Bhabha reminds us “is to deal not with them/us but with the

historically and temporally disjunct positions that minorities occupy

ambivalently within the nation’s space” (“Culture’s In-Between” 57). In my

mind a linear reference of culture implies containment in how we assign value

to cultural codes. My understanding of culture outside a linear reference is

present in all the selected works. There is no linear narrative across time and

space in any of the selected works. Moreover I would suggest that urban

cosmopolitan cities such as Montreal, New York, San Francisco (cities in

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question in some of the selected works) should also be framed outside fixed

time and space specific codes.

Cosmopolitan cities offer models of interaction which are different

from those imposed by national frames. To choose the neighbourhood

as a frame for analysis is to propose a different map, a crisscrossing of

motives and desires, a continual flow of crosscultural traffic

(“Hybridity Revisited: St. Michael’s of Mile End.” 17).

Similarly the movement between cultural and linguistic codes that comes from

hybridized life experiences is another example of how time and space specific

codes are continually shifting between past and present contexts. While this

thesis does not contest the ease of bringing together people who share the same

cultural and linguistic codes, this thesis celebrates those instances where

creative connectivity and code-switching brings together difference(s). The

creative connectivity I explore in each of the selected works paves our

understanding of identity construction as an artistic and pedagogical map. This

symbolic map is hybridized. That means that it continually retraces its insider

and outsider lines between cultural and linguistic spaces, outside assigned or

fixed codes of meaning.

Il est certain que l’être hybride pose de sérieux défis aux nationalismes.

Dans le pays politique et culturel actuel, les cultures nationales ont à se

définir. C’est la culture n’est plus une bulle sécuritaire qui sépare un

groupe d’individus d’un autre. Le régime de l’hybride nous oblige à

redéfinir le rapport entre culture, identité et citoyenneté (Hybridité

culturelle 56-57).

This thesis does not address the broader issues of citizenship and nationhood

that Simon mentions. However, in this era of globalization, there is no

question that individuals, especially immigrants, move more-or-less inside in-

between spaces of hybridized identification. Immigrant voices and nations

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who adopt immigrants are confronted more than ever by such hybrid spaces.

Therefore how immigrant voices define themselves inside their cultural spaces

of origin and how they connect with their dominant adopted cultural codes will

also have an impact on the dominant culture’s collective voice. Globalization

has meant that we are challenged to meet, greet and engage with Other

cultures and languages in more inclusive and respectful ways. This opens up

possibilities in how we understand identity and choose to define nation.

Thus Janet Paterson’s exploration of the role of the Other in Québec

literature in Figure de l’Autre dans le roman québécois forms another

important part of the platform from which I approach and continue the

discussion on hybridized identification and creative connectivity. First,

Paterson defines the Other or l’Autre as a status open to anyone. « N’importe

quel personnage peut se voir attribuer un statut d’altérité dans un contexte

particulier » (12). Paterson explores the notion of Other inside the French

Canadian novel and how the Other appears inside French Canadian literature.

Her work in this area is an important resource in my thesis. While Paterson

illustrates how the Other appears in works of fiction, my thesis goes further by

addressing different spaces of Other in works of fiction and in autobiography.

Moreover Paterson focuses exclusively on French Canadian works. Her

research concentrates on one area and therefore it is more extensively

developed. My thesis opens the door wider by selecting writers inside a North

American context. Because my choice of writers is so diverse, it would be very

difficult to develop my research in this thesis as thoroughly as Paterson does in

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her study. However Paterson’s insights on the Other in literary works provide

an important frame of reference in how I assign value to different forms of

Other that emerge in the works I have selected. As Paterson notes, « l’altérité

des personnages est entièrement déterminée par la définition du groupe de

référence » (23). The identifying factors of how the Other is represented in

fiction also offer an important understanding of the Other in autobiography.

These factors are therefore listed here for reference.

1) L’Autre est une notion relationnelle qui se définit par opposition à

un autre terme.

2) Pour que la différence inhérente à l’altérité soit significative, elle

implique la présence d’un groupe de référence dont se démarque

l’Autre.

3) Il importe de distinguer entre différence et altérité. L’enjeu ne

réside pas dans la différence, mais dans l’altérité. Le groupe de

référence dresse l’inventaire des traits pertinents qui constituent

l’altérité d’un personnage.

4) Tributaire d’un processus de construction idéologique, toute altérité

est variable, mouvante et susceptible de renversements. Elle n’est

marquée d’aucune immanence et peut être dotée de traits positifs ou

négatifs, euphoriques ou disphoriques dans un même espace social

ou discursif.

5) Si dans la vie réelle, l’altérité d’un individu est déterminée par la

société qui l’entoure, le personnage de l’Autre est, de même, tout

entier gouverné par les dispositifs du texte. (27)

These points are descriptive in their identification of the Other however they

are also prescriptive in how they define the voice of the Other in this thesis.

The notion of Other as relational, understanding difference by looking at

representations of Other inside group dynamics are important in how I

understand connectivity in the selected works. Moreover, how difference and

otherness are translated becomes a question of each writer’s choice of the

written word (as noted in point 5 above). How these works aim to validate the

position of Other and hybridized identification is a key element. This is why

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Paterson’s model of the Other as « positif ou negatif … souvent les deux à la

fois ... ni stable, ni fixe, mais mouvante » is a valuable reference (26).

Because the notion of Other continually moves between linguistic and cultural

spaces tensions and conflicts will arise. Paterson explains why the

confrontation process is a difficult one.

[L]e lien entre l’altérité, l’étrangeté et la folie est évidemment lourd de

significations et de conséquences. Ce qu’il met en pleine lumière, c’est

évidemment la peur de l’Autre : peur de ce qui dépasse les limites

acceptables de l’altérité; peur aussi de se détacher à tout jamais, par le

truchement de l’Autre, du groupe de référence, du nous-mêmes qui

confère au sujet son identité et son appartenance (35-36).

This thesis wishes to illustrate the importance of moving beyond such fear and

therefore enter open(ed) zones of acceptance. I believe that code-switching and

a deeper knowledge of different cultural codes provide a more open

understanding of difference(s). Throughout her references, Paterson identifies

the Other by capitalizing Autre. The capital distinguishes and privileges the

voice of the Other by assigning it the status of a proper name. This distinction

is an important marker of how Paterson validates the voice of the Other. This

thesis therefore follows in her footsteps and capitalizes Other to continue this

validation process.

In summary, the contributions of Sherry Simon and Janet Paterson

offer an invaluable platform from which I take up my exploration of hybrid

identity, what I have labeled creative connectivity and code-switching between

cultures and languages. This exploration looks at different forms of hybridized

identification. The writers I have selected speak from different cultural, racial,

heterosexual and homosexual backgrounds. Just as my selection of literary

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works is multi-disciplinary so is the theoretical frame. My desire to explore

code-switching and hybrid identification in this manner is a deliberate choice.

It frames the groundwork of my argument in favor of code-switching between

languages and therefore a multi-perspective vision, creative connectivity

between people and cultural codes, and finally multilingual education that I

address in my conclusion.

Outside my desire for a curriculum in multilingual education and my

wish for a greater focus on migrant writing and migrant populations in

university curricula, there are other questions I respond to in my chapters:

Why should we promote a hybrid subjectivity of self-hood? The responses are

built from Paul Ricoeur’s platform of ethical self-hood. Do tensions created by

hybrid identification pave the way for better connectivity between people? The

ideas are developed through Roland Barthes’ vision of relationships as

transgressed sites of desire. How do literary spaces allow us to better

explore/understand issues inside real spaces? Should it be based on James

Clifford’s understanding of how we travel between cultures? Just as all

language is a product of culture, culture is translated through a study of and

focus on our sociological spaces. I also rely on Cathy Caruth’s thoughts on

trauma narrative to understand how past pain continually impacts present

realities. My exploration of the selected works within such a broad theoretical

framework is a necessary approach. By addressing the preceding questions, I

hope to illustrate how a multi-disciplinary focus is useful, even necessary,

when we examine how cultures and languages, ultimately people come

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together. Individual identity is a complex labyrinth, layered within different

codes. How it evolves, how it is understood and how it is shaped are therefore

interdependent, complex processes. The multi-disciplinary theoretical frame I

apply in this thesis and the diverse choice of writers parallel the complexity

and co-dependent nature of identity negotiations. This is another form of code-

switching, of creative connectivity between spaces. In my conclusion I will

re-address and try to answer the questions I have raised here. I intend to

illustrate the (inter)multidisciplinary aspects of code-switching between

languages and cultures as a necessary tool of communication in our

increasingly globalized cultural and economic exchanges. I also wish to point

out the importance and growing reality of code-switching or hybrid

identification in immigrant stories.

Methodology

Just as my literary selection of works draws upon a variety of different

cultural bases, my theoretical frame is equally diverse. I address the topic of

creative connectivity between cultures and languages from a post-colonial

reference through Homi Bhabha’s work on hybridity (1994). In addition to my

debt to Chantal Zabus’ (1991) work on code-switching inside an African

context, I approach perspectives of heteroglossia in some of my works through

Mikhail Bakhtin’s contributions in this area (1981, 1984). Then I apply James

Clifford’s ethnographic illustrations about traveling culture to illustrate how

migrants and hosts occupy the role of ethnographer (1992, 1999). Finally,

Doris Sommer’s more recent vision of bilingual education (2004) is an

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invaluable reference and particularly pertinent in how I wish to bridge the gap

between literary code-switching and narrated lived experiences. In my

conclusion, I will refer to code-switching, primarily through Daniel Redinger’s

Ph.D. “Language Attitudes and Code-Switching Behaviour in a Multilingual

Educational Context: The Case of Luxembourg”). I am interested in his thesis

because it is a case-study and because it offers statistical data. Redinger offers

a study of triglossic education rather than the bilingual models looked at in

Canadian and American research.

The most passionate frame of hybridized identification as creative

connection in this thesis develops from Roland Barthes’s ideas of la relation

privilégiée. His model of identity illustrates a fluid, transgressive process of

negotiation between how we find and create meaning (inside culture and

language) one relationship at a time. Such zones of intimate engagement allow

people to define identity in more creative terms. Roland Barthes’ landscaping

of identity, his (sk)etching of personal relationships anchor my particular

vision of hybrid code-switching as creative connectivity (1977, 1995). As

noted in the following quotation by Ayn Rand, we paint our meaning of life

through art, however sometimes art allows us to re-paint our vision of life.

In art, and in literature, the end and the

means, or the subject and the style, must

be worthy of each other. That which is

not worth contemplating in life, is not

worth re-creating in art.

~Ayn Rand

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Homi Bhabha and the Hybrid

Many a doctrine is like a window pane.

We see truth through it but it divides us

from truth.

~Kahlil Gibran

Gibran’s link between doctrines and truth is an interesting way to

understand Bhabha’s hybrid. Like a transparent window pane, the hybrid sits

between the native and Other. While we can see both sides clearly we do not

easily recognize or accept the hybrid that lurks between opposing cultures and

languages. The many faces of hybrids in literature remind us of how they

“emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and

asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power and

by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre”

(Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2). The importance of one’s sense of difference

is an exploration of the “relationship between self and place” (8) and this idea

emerges in all the works I focus on in this thesis because place and

displacement are “major concerns of all … people” as is the “appropriateness

of an imported language to describe the experience of place” (24). Because

“marginality became an unprecedented source of creative energy” I explore

code-switching and creative connectivity between cultures and languages

under this premise of creative energy (12). I am interested in how images of

hybridized identification began to emerge during the late 1980s and early

1990s (the publication dates of the selected works) in North America and how

they implicitly speak in favor of multilingual education as an important tool to

keep cultures intimately connected with each other. As immigrant period

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works they illustrate a more subversive and newer vision of cultural and

linguistic hybrid identity than past models of the hybrid. These works offer a

valuable argument in favor of code-switching and multi-lingual education.

Such migrant writers demonstrate a wish to bring their language to an “alien

environment” by introducing themselves and the alien environment to “a fresh

set of experiences” (25). This idea of a fresh set of experiences is a critical

element of how I understand hybridity because “alterity implies alteration”

(33). Bhabha understands the hybrid as someone who struggles to be freed

“from a past which stressed ancestry, and which valued the ‘pure’ over its

threatening opposite, the ‘composite’” (qtd. in Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin

34). Moving between cultures creates new spaces, hybrid in nature therefore

these spaces shift “around an ambivalent axis of desire and aversion” (Young

19). Inside this composite and ambivalent space, the hybrid must frame

culture and language as a continually shifting movement between desire and

aversion. It is this shifting movement that generates creative energy. In the

works I have selected, such shifting operates as a tool of recovery, retrieval,

and reconstruction.

Outside this theoretical framework, the hybrid in the selected works

may also be understood through the film Ground Hog Day. In the same way

that Bill Murray plays the role of a man in exile with himself, the hybrid in

these works is an exile continually seeking belonging outside fixed cultural

and linguistic codes. Like the character Murray plays, the hybrid must navigate

between a past that remains fixed in meaning with a present that is being

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continually redefined because of that past. In this film, Murray relives the

same day over and over again, reacting differently to the same events. In a

similar vein, the hybrid relives and recreates the same past, Bhabha’s a priori

historical past, one that is continually being split with present cultural codes.

This implies a complete letting go of rigid behaviours and old patterns of

communication. The hybrid, like Murray, experiences a cultural and spiritual

reawakening each time he relives a past cultural moment (in Murray’s case the

same day) differently. This reawakening is the hybrid’s process of code-

switching between different contexts.

The hybrid I speak of experiences a reawakening through a shifting

movement between different cultural or linguistic codes. Thus creative

connectivity occurs in those instances where the hybrid moves between such

spaces. By continually traveling between different codes, the hybrid learns

how to reinterpret old visions. However, the hybrid’s continual displacement

within, and movement between, cultures can sometimes be exhausting,

creating friction. However it is this friction that gives the hybrid its value and

its strength. I believe this is because the hybrid’s outsider position provides a

deeper understanding and grasp of different cultural, racial and linguistic

perspectives. So this thesis grounds its frame of hybridized identification

inside the value it assigns to different/differing perspectives. As such Homi

Bhabha’s postcolonial vision of third spaces and nation provide an important

frame of reference for the hybrid. In Bhabha’s model of third spaces,

The pact of interpretation is never simply an act of communication

between the I and the You designated in the statement. The production

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of meaning requires that these two places be mobilized in the passage

through a Third Space, which represents both the general conditions of

language and the specific implication of the utterance in a performative

and institutional strategy of which it cannot ‘in itself’ be conscious

(The Location of Culture 53).

The performative and institutional aspects of this Third Space imply a shifting

of cultural meaning. This in turn contests the vision of pure identity or pure

culture that stands in opposition to the hybrid. Bhabha asks us to view cultural

meaning as an “ambivalent space of enunciation” where “the inherent

originality or ‘purity’ of cultures are untenable … [where] the meaning and

symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity … [where] even the same

signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (54-55).

The works I have selected illustrate hybridized identification along this axis of

Third Space Bhabha identifies.

In addition, the hybrid spaces created through code-switching carry

a particular ambivalence that haunts the idea of the nation ... an

ambivalence that emerges from a growing awareness that, despite the

certainty with which historians speak of the ‘origins’ of nation as a sign

of the ‘modernity’ of society, the cultural temporality (my emphasis)

of the nation inscribes a much more transitional social reality (Nation

and Narration 1).

The cultural temporality Bhabha mentions is a reality of the hybrid

experience, a reality of code-switching between languages and cultures, of

moving between spaces of transitional social reality. I understand Bhabha’s

view of cultural temporality outside fixed terms or compartmentalized notions

of time. Bhabha’s vision of nation is liminal therefore nation cannot be

contained inside fixed meanings. This is because the population that makes up

a nation is not static. How a nation draws its lines between insider and outsider

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are as ambivalent and shifting as how a nation ascribes itself with a national

culture. Bhabha speaks of how the “boundary” with its “problem of

outside/inside must always itself be a process of hybridity, incorporating new

‘people’ in relation to the body politic, generating other sites of meaning” (4)

Today, this is a growing reality in urban North American cities that favor

immigration. Hybrid identification in this thesis is therefore framed inside

Bhabha’s process of hybridity.

Through their exploration of different modes of in-between passages of

cultural and linguistic codes, the works I have selected illustrate conflicts and

creative connectivity as continually shifting spaces, renamed patterns of

identification between a community’s center and its margins. Connectivity

occurs in those moments when new roads pave old ones differently, when

existing modes of cultural meaning and communication are shifted by new,

foreign materials such as linguistic code-switching. This process of re-

pavement is bound inside a system of “new meaning and different directions ...

for nation (community and cultural meaning) is an agency of ambivalent

narration ... a force for subordination, fracturing, diffusing, reproducing, as

much as producing, creating, forcing, guiding” (3-4). When we speak of

authority, perhaps the most potent forms of authority in identity negotiations

emerge from political and religious codes.

This thesis does not explicitly address the impact or formulation of

such authorities (in any substantive manner) on identity negotiation. Rather,

my focus and interest are on varied forms of code-switching and in how the

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hybrid Other emerges when people on the margins of a society seek

identification, connection, and understanding between a dominant centre and

peripheral Other cultures. We must remember that the site of hybrid cultural

space(s) or zones of “the ‘other’ is never outside or beyond us; it emerges

forcefully, within cultural discourse, when we think we speak most intimately

and indigenously ‘between’ ourselves’” (4). Moreover from a Ricœurian

perspective of soi-même comme un autre, this idea of self-hood as an aspect of

otherness, is at the root of how individuals name themselves. It is difficult,

almost impossible, to speak about oneself in absence of another. This idea of

speaking intimately and indigenously implies connectivity between Self and

Other, between sameness and difference.

Hybridity then may be understood as an impetus for new meaning

where individual stories, just as individual experiences are like music or dance

compositions, varied and different each time they are reinterpreted. The

migrant writers that are the subject of my research illustrate hybrid

identification as a series of different dances, as a coming together and

separation of diverse cultures, languages and traditions. This thesis addresses

this movement and its in-between spaces of negotiation as an interpretive

dance between cultures and languages. Moreover I address this movement as

one of privilege because of its movement between language, culture,

spirituality, racial lines, and physical spaces. If we recognize how the fabric of

a nation’s cultural identity is a shifting space, this invites more hybridized

negotiations of identity inside globalized frames of cultural exchange. National

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identity within urban American and Canadian spaces is a shifting hybrid

tapestry spinning new hues, new patterns and new images of cultural identity.

This thesis therefore grounds its interpretations and supporting research by

suggesting that “those who occupy hybrid spaces benefit from having an

understanding of both local and global cosmopolitanism” (4). While this thesis

ultimately focuses on hybridization as a position of power and as a site of

creative connectivity between cultures and languages, I am aware that the fate

of the hybrid in continual movement between spaces is not a comfortable one.

In a world that demands conformity and sameness, it is difficult to move

between such spaces.

Mikhail Bakhtin and Heteroglossia

Thus connectivity between Self and Other is a transitory, shifting space

of meaning-making processes coming together and separating over and over

again. Dialogue or code-switching encourages new spaces of creative

connectivity. Language and linguistic identification are therefore key elements

in some of the works I have selected (D’Alfonso, Goto, Anzaldúa in

particular), specifically because of how these writers move between different

languages to re-assign meaning, giving newer shapes to existing forms of

communication. However in all of the selected works, having an authentic

voice is about communication and code-switching between culturally encoded

spaces. Thus Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas on heteroglossia and polyphonic

dialogues frame the meaning-making process of narrative voice.

The words of a language belong to nobody, but still we hear those

words only in particular individual utterances, we read them in

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particular individual works, and in such cases the words already have

not only a typical, but also (depending on the genre) a more or less

clearly reflected individual expression, which is determined by the

unrepeatable individual context of the utterance. Neutral dictionary

meanings of the words of a language ensure their common features and

guarantee that all speakers of a given language will understand one

another, but the use of words in live speech communication is always

individual and contextual in nature (Bakhtin, Speech Genres and other

Late Essays 88).

This notion of “speech communication ... as contextual in nature” defines the

hybrid voice. The hybrid moves between cultures and languages, creating a

new space “filled with others' words, varying degrees of otherness or varying

degrees of “our-own-ness” ... These words ... carry with them their own

expression, their own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and re-

accentuate” (89). All the writers I focus on move between such degrees of

otherness or our-own-ness Bakhtin speaks of.

D’Alfonso, Goto and Anzaldúa illustrate the importance of linguistic as

well as cultural code-switching. They refuse to identify their voice inside fixed

or singular codes of communication. As Bakhtin points out, singular forms of

communication do not exist, even when people speak to each other in one

language. This is because

utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient;

they are aware of and mutually reflect one another... Every utterance

must be regarded as primarily a response to preceding utterances of the

given sphere (we understand the word 'response' here in the broadest

sense). Each utterance refutes affirms, supplements, and relies upon the

others, presupposes them to be known, and somehow takes them into

account... Therefore, each kind of utterance is filled with various kinds

of responsive reactions to other utterances of the given sphere of

speech communication (p.91).

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Bakhtin explains how the words or the utterances we choose are entangled in

previous words and previous meanings. Moreover each time we communicate

our words, the meaning behind those words are encoded inside other

meanings. When writers such as D’Alfonso, Goto and Anzaldúa code-switch

linguistically they broaden Bakhtin’s vision of utterances because they

populate the meaning-making map of communication with more complex

levels of encoded, superimposed utterances. Thus the responsive reactions of

how language is spoken, or in this instance, written is a continuous stream of

meanings coming together. Moving between French, Italian, and English,

D’Alfonso re-maps his vision as Bakhtinian with “dialogic overtones” as

“artistic ... born and shaped ... process[es] of interaction and struggle with

others' thought” that illustrate how this “cannot but be reflected in [all] the

[linguistic] forms that ... express our thought as well.” (92). For Goto, the

expression or utterances between languages becomes an assignment to

reinstate linguistic and cultural codes at risk of being lost. Goto’s protagonists’

desire to hold on to, and engage with, the Japanese language is retaliation of an

assimilation process they do not wish to take part in. In such instances “the

role of the others for whom the utterance is constructed is extremely great...

From the very beginning, the speaker expects a response from them, an active

responsive understanding. [Thus] the entire utterance is constructed, as it were,

in anticipation of encountering this [Japanese] response” they must engage

with (94). This response or responsive understanding illustrated in Goto’s

work may be understood as new dialogues of meaning-making between

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Japanese and English codes. Anzaldúa’s process of utterances and a

heteroglossic dialogue extend further than D’Alfonso or Goto. Anzaldúa

moves between English, Spanish and various slangs of Spanish and Mexican, a

total of seven linguistic speech patterns. In Bakhtinian terms, her particularly

hybrid dialogue is “interindividual ... located outside the soul of the speaker …

[it cannot entirely] ... belong only to him (121). Because Anzaldúa’s process of

subjectivity is so multi-subjective, I apply Bakhtin’s notion of interindividual

as a two-fold process. First, her heteroglossic style of narration moves between

languages and culturally coded meanings as outlined in Bakhtin’s model of

utterances. Second, her movement between standard languages and slang

illustrates her inner process of heteroglossic dialogue. By this I mean that

Anzaldúa communicates with herself in hybrid speech patterns as much as she

does with those around her. Far from suggesting a schizophrenic dialogue, I

am pointing out how intimately she embraces her hybrid subjectivity. In

Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination, he speaks of how

at any given moment, languages of various epochs and periods of

socio-ideological life cohabit with one another... Thus at any given

moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from top to

bottom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological

contradictions between the present and the past, between differing

epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the

present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a

bodily form... Therefore languages do not exclude each other, but

rather intersect with each other in many different ways (291).

Anzaldúa embodies Bakhtin’s definition of heteroglot not just in how she

engages with language(s) but also in her process of narrative style which

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brings together social, political, historical, sexual, poetic, linguistic and

cultural markers of meaning.

All the writers I focus on share some aspect of Bakhtin’s Dialogic

Imagination noted in the following quotation:

Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the

private property of the speaker's intentions; it is populated –

overpopulated– with the intentions of others. Expropriating I, forcing it

to submit to one's own intentions and accents, is a difficult and

complicated process... As a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, as

heteroglot opinion, language, for the individual consciousness, lies on

the borderline between oneself and the other... The word in language is

half someone else's. It becomes one’s "own" only when the speaker

populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when he

appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive

intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not

exist in a neutral and impersonal language... but rather it exists in other

people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's

intentions; it is from there that one must take the word, and make it

one's own (294)

As Bakhtin points out language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the

borderline between oneself and the other. This notion mirrors a Ricœurian

pattern of identity in that the focus, therefore the relationship between Self and

Other can only be understood relationally. Bakhtin also reminds us (in the

preceding quotation) that how we choose language is dependent on our

interaction and contact with others. Perhaps most important, Bakhtin’s ideas

on heteroglossia illustrate the importance of how open-ended meaning-making

processes are. We can never fully know or authentically translate between

languages. Speaking from a hybrid perspective or a Bakhtinian polyphonic

voice, meaning will always be layered, superimposed and therefore open to

different interpretations and so impossible to completely know. By moving

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and traveling between different linguistic and cultural codes, the writers I have

selected in this thesis illustrate how fragile zone(s) of meaning can be inside

frames of identity construction. Such writers do not always, as Anita Rau

Badami points out “identify…with any one community” (qtd in Chakraborty

129). However, these writers who speak from the border zones of different

cultural discourses and codes provide readers with new perspectives of identity

construction. “Literature…is the most revealing mode of experiential access to

ideology that we possess. It is in literature…that we observe in a peculiarly

complex, coherent, intensive and immediate fashion the workings of ideology

in the textures of lived experiences of class-societies” (Eagleton qtd in Smith

25). In the works I have selected, lived experience is narrated as a continual

process of travel, of code-switching between cultural and linguistic codes. In

those instances where creative connectivity occurs, the hybrid voice has value

and finds temporary refuge.

Doris Sommer: Code-switching as Jouissance

Doris Sommer’s exploration of bilingual education in the United

States, what she names bilingual aesthetics, also frames my thesis argument

and how I assign value to spaces of creative connectivity. Her vision of

language complements my ideas of code-switching and Bakhtin’s notion of

heteroglossic dialogue. For Sommer, language exchange or code-switching is a

playful even humorous site of communication. As a creative model of

hybridized identification, it is a valuable point of reference in how I define and

explore code-switching in this thesis. Her desire for bilingual education as well

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as her vision of code-switching as creative play also promotes Bhabha’s

movement of discourses between pedagogy and the performative. This thesis,

through its choice of literary works, supports Sommer’s claim that “the world

has outgrown a one-to-one identity between a language and a people”

(Sommer xv). Sommer’s insists that we need to “supplement one identity with

others” (xv). Moreover, the value of language preservation is validated, not

diminished, inside Sommer’s vision of bilingual aesthetics. “Lose a language,

and you’ve impoverished the world, because each language constitutes a

distinct psyche of a people” [my emphasis] (xvii). The writers I focus on

adhere to this concept of distinctiveness we need to value in every language.

Thus Sommer’s insights about bi(multi)lingual communication offer a

valuable frame of reference to validate code-switchng. Literal translation is not

a point Sommer focuses on. In those instances where languages meet and greet

each other they are hybrid exchanges. “Code-switching is less dignified and

more daring” therefore the emphasis is on how code-switching “plays naughty

games between languages, poaching and borrowing, and crossing lines” (34).

There is a distinctly Barthesian note of transgression in Sommer’s tone.

Moreover her reference to Barthesian jouissance signifies language as sexual

release. As she puts it, “at the brink between one culture and another, textual

engagements are so intense that they disrupt consciousness“(59). Sommer

also embodies a Kantian response when she suggests that language(s) are

“primitive responses” where “strangeness can inspire passion without getting

stuck there … reflection allows one to take pleasure in the intensity and in the

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moral capacity to abstract from it” (63). Such patterns of abstraction or

negotiations of hybridized identification and creative connectivity between

languages and cultures are critical focal points in all the selected works

explored in this thesis. Furthermore, in those instances when code-switching

occurs without translation, it becomes a tool to contest the hegemony of

language. Most important in this thesis is the value I assign to creative

connectivity. In Goto’s and in Anzaldúa’s works, it is a platform from which

“minority languages can make majority languages nervous for reasons beyond

the obstacles to understanding” (90). Choosing not to translate Other

languages affords these migrant writers the opportunity to focus on new

processes of meaning-making while simultaneously obliging readers to find

such meaning on their own.

James Clifford and Traveling Cultures : An Ethnographic Perspective

I understand this process of meaning-making from an ethnographer’s

perspective. James Clifford asks an important question: “What does it mean to

learn or use a language?” (Traveling Cultures 99) He answers this question,

borrowing from Bakhtin in his assertion that “language is a diverging,

contesting, dialoguing set of discourses that no “native” –let alone visitor–can

ever learn” (99). While this may be true, there is value in the negotiation and

communication patterns Clifford speaks of. An ethnographer travels “for a

time” wishing to “make a second home/workplace” seeking “development of

both personal and “cultural” competence” (99). Similarly as immigrants

travel, they will adopt new cultures (in varying degrees) depending on how

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long they choose to stay and how their process of integration evolves. I would

suggest that this development of both personal and cultural competence

Clifford mentions as ethnographer can also be applied to immigrants and how

they negotiate identity. I also believe that it concerns host citizens. The writers

I have selected illustrate an implicit desire for such development hence value is

created through their desire for personal and cultural competence between

dominant and peripheral cultures. As Clifford points out the “goal is not to

replace the cultural figure “native” with the intercultural figure “traveler”

(101). Rather the focus is on “concrete mediations of the two … both are

constitutive of what will count as cultural experience” (101). Thus traveling

suggests more than movement between cultures and languages. It is a desire

for a more intimate understanding of such movement.

Travelers move about under strong cultural, political, and economic

compulsions and … certain travelers are materially privileged, others

oppressed. These different circumstances are crucial determinations …

of movements in specific colonial, neo-colonial, and postcolonial

circuits, different diasporas, borderlands, exiles, detours and returns.

Travel … practices that produce knowledge, stories, traditions,

comportments, music, books, diaries, and other cultural expressions

(108).

The writers I have selected fall under this category of Clifford’s traveler.

Anzaldúa speaks from the borderlands of Mexico and the U.S. Moreover the

cultural expressions she embraces are hybrid constituting travel between

different contexts. In Hong Kingston’s and Goto’s writing, stories and

traditions frame negotiation and travel between cultures. Rodriguez’s and

Hoffman’s autobiographies read like diaries. While Rodriguez narrates his

story as a journey between public and personal spaces, Hoffman speaks more

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emotionally of her feelings of exile, her nostalgic detours and returns between

Polish and North American experiences/spaces. Laferrière’s use of parody

effectively moves between racialized margins of privileged and oppressed

spaces illustrating the importance of renaming cultural expressions that

contain identity negatively. Finally, in D’Alfonso’s vision of hybridized

identification, traveling inside three cultural and linguistic contexts is a solid

illustration of creative connectivity between spaces. In all the works,

Clifford’s cultural traveler may be understood as a “translation term … a good

reminder that all translation terms used in global comparisons … get us some

distance and fall apart” (110). Each work addresses traveling between cultures

as a creative platform of identification. I view this platform as Clifford does,

as a focusing lens which allows us to “learn a lot about [different] peoples,

cultures, and histories … enough to know what you’re missing” (110). This

process of translation between people Clifford describes is a continual site of

movement, of seeking new meaning(s). Thus Clifford’s model of tradittore,

traduttore cultural expressions provide an important frame in how I

illustrate/promote the idea of creative and intimate spaces connectivity in this

thesis.

Roland Barthes: Transgressive Explorations of Identity

Finally creative connectivity, what I label a Barthesian relation

privilégiée, comes up repeatedly in my thesis because it structures the idea of

code-switching as an intimate (not group) exchange. This is predominantly

why my thesis focuses on individual identity models rather than collective

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forms. However the value of the collective formula becomes important and

necessary in how I approach creative connectivity between individuals because

of how collectivity evokes thoughts of our ancestors, of family, of community

belonging. Therefore our cultural and linguistic roots frame an important

portrait of how we become who we are becoming. In this vein, Barthes’ vision

of his grandmothers provides an interesting angle of observation about how

Barthes translates his identity, his experiences. He describes his grandmothers

in polarized terms.

L’une était belle, parisienne. L’autre était bonne, provinciale : imbue de

bourgeoisie – non de noblesse, dont elle était pourtant issue –, elle avait

un sentiment vif du récit social qu’elle menait dans un français soigné

de couvent où persistaient les imparfaits du subjonctif (Roland Barthes

18).

Barthes does not tell us much about his parisienne grandmother in the

preceding quotation. By simply saying she is beautiful and Parisian, Barthes

suggests that no other description is necessary. With his other grandmother he

refrains from speaking about her physical appearance focusing instead on her

being bourgeoise and her mastery of French. What stands out in this

juxtaposition between one grandmother’s aesthetic, visual beauty and the

other’s more elegant inner grace is the simplicity of how he validates these

women by attaching intimate importance to each one: “En Chine, il y a très

longtemps, toute la communauté était enterrée autour de la grand-mère” (18).

With this simple declaration Barthes signifies his grandmothers as ancestral,

central figures in his sphere of intimate relationships.

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This image of the grandmother as symbol of continuity, of community

is an important one in Goto’s writing. The symbolic centrality Barthes assigns

to his grandmother exists in African, First Nations, Indian, Italian and many

other cultures and literatures. The description Barthes provides of his

grandmother is therefore an important reminder of the simple yet powerful role

a grandmother occupies in the family pyramid. The grandmother as a trope

who symbolizes the connection between past and present worlds is clearly

developed in Goto’s work. Such value drawn by the intimate connectivities

between people shapes the heart of my illustrations about hybridized

identification. Therefore Barthes’ particular vision of la relation privilégiée is

an invaluable frame in how I read individual identity and develop the idea of

creative connectivity in the selected works. Barthes also traces and translates

his intimate relationships through simple expressions/descriptions/photographs

illustrating his desire to focus on image over words.

Mon corps n’est libre de tout imaginaire que lorsqu’il retrouve son

espace de travail. Cet espace est partout la même, patiemment adapté à

la jouissance de peindre, d’écrire, de classer (44).

What Barthes validates most is la jouissance he finds in painting, writing and

classifying. His reference to classification makes sense because of how

Barthes relies on image (or photographs) over stories to speak about life.

Les arbres sont des alphabets, disaient les Grecs. Parmi tous les arbres-

lettres, le palmier est le plus beau. De l’écriture, profuse et distincte

comme le jet de ses palmes, il possède l’effet majeur : la retombée (47).

Through descriptions of his grandmothers along with the preceding images of

trees Barthes offers an excellent example of his reliance on image over story.

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I understand code-switching between languages and cultures as

imagery, as a process of creative connectivity between people. In Roland

Barthes, Barthes divides his personal story as follows: In the first 48 pages

pictures dominate text as he describes his childhood and the people that

formed that childhood. In the next hundred pages he defines words and

expressions moving between descriptive reflections of such notions as the

sentence, migraines, the unfashionable, love, madness, fiction, etc. He ends

with a chronology of his life events, a bibliography of works consulted and a

glossary of terms explained. His work is autobiographical in style, however it

is presented as a coded book of definitions on the one hand and a descriptive

photo album on the other hand. There are no detailed accounts of his lived

experiences. He describes his writing style as follows: “Tout ceci doit être

considéré comme dit par un personnage de roman” (5). This technique of self-

identification as a scripted, creative form appears in varying degrees in all the

selected works. The writers I have selected illustrate the value of hybridized

identification through performative writing strategies and descriptive

narratives. Thus code-switching validates how the story is told, giving the

image as much creative weight as the experience.

Such imagery is culturally defined. Cultural psychologist Carola

Suárez-Orozco writes that “the task of immigration … is creating a

transcultural identity” (“Transcultural Identities” 1). The distinction between

intercultural, transcultural and multicultural is an important one. The first

implies an understanding between cultures, the goal is to “seek ways in which

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such cultures could … get on with, understand and recognize one another”

(Welsch, “Transculturality – the Puzzling Form of Culture Today” 2). This

seems appropriate in nation states that promote the idea of pure identities as a

“traditional conception of culture” (2). Similarly, multicultural frames of

identity promote “tolerance and understanding” while favoring “separating

barriers” between cultures (2). Accommodation between cultures is enclosed

inside adjacent spaces that do not necessarily favor real points of connectivity.

If we accept that cultures are autonomous as much as they are interdependent,

transcultural spaces fit the notion of creative connectivity and hybridized

identification I promote in this thesis. Because of globalization, the spaces

between what is foreign and local have been substantially narrowed, blurred or

even redefined in some instances. Music and food cultures are good examples

of how we borrow and adopt/adapt new definitions out of traditional codes.

Think of hybrid restaurants offering for example Indo-Chinese cuisine

(popular in Toronto); electronic or house music that borrows from and

recreates Disco/Afro/Latin/R&B etc. For instance classical music remixed into

house sounds (see Beethoven’s Fifth house remix by Soulwax) is a creative

and contemporary example of hybridized sounds in today’s music. House (or

electronic music) in particular is an interesting example of hybridity. It

emerged as an underground genre in the 1980s in Chicago, uniting Black and

Gay communities through dance. Today, it has become a way to redefine old

classics into newer forms of music. In this vein, the works I have selected offer

similar underground visions of transcultural meanings, ones outside “old

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homogenizing and separatist idea[s] of cultures” (4). In his article

“Transculturality – the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today” Wolfgang Welsch

points out the following:

Cultures today are extremely interconnected and entangled with each

other. Lifestyles no longer end at the borders of national cultures, but

go beyond these, are found in the same way in other cultures….The

new forms of entanglement are a consequence of migratory processes,

as well as of worldwide material and immaterial communication

systems and economic interdependencies and dependencies .…

Cultures today are in general characterized by hybridization (4).

Technology has certainly affected how we communicate with each other.

Music remains the best vehicle to understand the way we give meaning to past

experience. The group Flo Rida just released their version of Nina Simone’s

song “How I Feel”, an interesting, perhaps bastardized, marriage of hip-hop

and jazz-laced sounds. While some music artists would argue against such

remixing, the popularity of House and Electronic music festivals worldwide

speaks a different story. It is a trend that is here to stay. This coming together

of different sounds in music bears a resemblance to how languages and

cultures are being pushed together more and more today. This means that

individual codes of identification are more hybridized. Today’s writers are not

all “shaped by one single homeland, but by differing reference countries” or

cultures (4). Like Welsch, I do not conflate such transcultural identity patterns

with national identity issues. It is why I do not explicitly address the more

pejorative issues of immigration such as the Japanese Canadian internment

which began in the 1940s. Nor do I focus on American issues of denied

citizenship to Asian immigrants that began in the late 1800s and continued

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until the early 1940s. This exclusion does not undermine the importance of

these historical moments. It is simply excluded because neither Hong

Kingston’s work nor Goto’s work is a direct contestation of these past

discriminatory experiences. However these historical forms of racism resonate

subtly and they are nuanced through the way these writers choose to redefine

their immigrant identity on their terms. Rather than address issues of racism,

my thesis focuses more directly on how the writers I have selected emphasize

(in different degrees) the difficulty of remaining bound by, and tied to, one

cultural or linguistic identity when their process of identity is continually

shifting between different spaces, different codes of identification.

The works I have selected represent individual characterizations of

hybridized identification rather than national or even community-based

identification. It is therefore understood that these representations of individual

identity do not necessarily translate a cultural group’s identity in similar

patterns. Each writer I have selected addresses creative connectivity and code-

switching between languages and cultures in ways that illustrate the value

behind such connectivity. These writers frame their negotiation of hybridized

identification and its in-between spaces as sites of value and conflict. However

such hybrid zones offer more open, fluid and comprehensive understandings of

different codes. In most instances, code-switching (cultural and/or linguistic)

is a consequence of how (im)migrant populations draw lines between who they

were versus who they are becoming. Chapter One focuses on Hiromi Goto,

Maxine Hong Kingston, Eva Hoffman and Gloria Anzaldúa and how they

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address the socially and culturally defined female voice in their works. They

focus on how feminine subjectivity is named and how desire for Other spaces

influence that naming process. Chapter Two addresses the socially and

culturally defined male voice in the works of Richard Rodriguez, Dany

Laferrière and Antonio D’Alfonso. Sexual space (or in Rodriguez’s case his

closeted sexuality) is an important element of male subjectivity in these works.

Finally, Chapter Three looks at the importance of linguistic code-switching in

the works of Gloria Anzaldúa and Hiromi Goto. These writers move between

languages, often without translation, to subvert the power of the centre and the

hegemony of English.

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CHAPTER ONE

Performative narratives and Other desires of the socially and culturally

defined female immigrant voice.

Le mot est celui qui illumine ou

redonne vie, il est la densité

voluptueuse de l'esprit, celui qui

déchiffre et définit, avant de te

faire sombrer dans une énigme

plus vaste encore.

~ Zoé Valdés

I adore simple pleasures. They are

the last refuge of the complex.

~ Oscar Wilde

Life isn't about finding yourself.

Life is about creating yourself.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Understanding one person’s identity as a negotiation between different

cultural and linguistic markers is not an individual journey. Much like a

romantic connection between two people, a successful exchange is dependent

on how one person engages with another to create a harmonious partage. The

construction of individual identity and its discourse is therefore dependent on

several factors. In a literary context, a key point is the connection between a

writer’s intention and a reader’s meaning-making process. Issues of feminine

and masculine subjectivity must also be taken into consideration. This chapter

focuses on feminine subjectivity as illustrated, translated and redefined in the

writings of Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms (1994), Maxine Hong

Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1975-76), Eva Hoffman’s Lost in

Translation (1989) and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987). I

frame my interpretation of feminine subjectivity in these works through

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questions Gayatri Spivak asks. She does not define feminine specificity by

asking “Who am I? But [rather] who is the other woman? How am I naming

her? How does she name me?” (Spivak qtd. in Lionnet 3). Such questioning

between self and other can also provide a better understanding of hybridized

identification.

These questions are influenced by differences of color, culture, and

environment. In her paper, “On Judith Butler and Performativity”, Sara Salih

explains that “gender is not something one is, it is something one does, an act,

or more precisely, a sequence of acts, a verb rather than a noun” (55). I

understand the notion of naming Gayatri speaks of in the same context as

Salih’s use of gender as a verb. Gender is therefore understood as “something

that one does” in the writing of Goto, Hong Kingston, Hoffman and Anzaldúa.

The protagonists in these works struggle to come to terms with how others

wish to ‘dress’ them inside a fixed identity versus how they design identity as

something more fluid. This fluidity is Barthesian in context « hors du vrai et du

faux, hors du réussi et du raté… retiré de toute finalité » (Barthes, Fragments

d’un discours amoureux 30). Moreover, I would qualify their acts of doing as a

translation process, an artistic endeavor inasmuch as it may be understood as a

living testimony of how these protagonists define their subjectivity. The

translation process is also a space of reinvention in the works I have selected.

In Re-Belle et Infidèle: The Body Bilingual, Susanne De De Lotbinière-

Harwood suggests that « toutes les femmes sont bilingues. Nous « possédons »

forcément la langue dominante, de fabrication masculine, puisque c’est la

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seule qui a une valeur reconnue » (13). Thus validating the female voice must

be negotiated outside this masculine construction.

Negotiation of the female immigrant voice outside such white, male

constructions of identity aligns these women in exercises of Bhabha’s

pedagogy as they negotiate a voice outside past and present historical contexts

of white male, moving into female structures of identity. Negotiating and

identifying the female voice outside such constructions is particularly complex

for immigrant women of color. They are confronted by a language encoded

inside a masculine discourse and the white female voice. Thus the acts of

doing for women of color involve a negotiation of the female voice outside

white North American constructions of feminine identity and language and it

is in these zones that they engage in Bhabha’s performative narrative to

redefine themselves. Their individual expressions, their particular narrative

styles and their desire to move between cultural and linguistic codes shapes

their immigrant voices as creatively colored rather than marginalized colors of

difference. These writers also negotiate their female voice against the

hegemony of English. Linguistic code-switching in their works (particularly

Goto and Anzaldúa) may then be understood as a tool of change, a social

translation process that transforms these writers as « femmes comme agentes

morales ... tout à fait appropriée pour la traduction ... une pratique constant du

choix » (72). The value Goto and Anzaldúa assign to linguistic code-switching

will be addressed in greater detail in Chapter Three. However equally

important with all four writers is the process of cultural and social code-

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switching which allows the female voice to be heard between these different

junctures. This process permits them to be heard as “foreign-correspondent”

(Katy Keene qtd. in De Lotbinière-Harwood 83) and as writers who « vont

prendre l’expérience des femmes comme point de depart » (De De Lotbinière-

Harwood 73). Bhabha’s discourse of pedagogy surfaces through their words as

they negotiate between their historical past and present contexts.

De De Lotbinière-Harwood views writing in French as an act of

survival, an examination of female voices outside labels that contain them

inside dominant white labels of identification. This is a key element in the

selected works. They contest labels that may restrain their feminine

subjectivity inside the male hierarchical structures of their past or present

cultures. Bhabha’s performative is therefore a key aspect of each writer’s

translation process. Feminine subjectivity must be an active rather than passive

negotiation of connectivity between cultures, of negotiation for a female voice

outside masculine and/or white feminine constructions of identity. This active

negotiation of connectivity between cultures shifts in meaning recreating a

hybrid female voice. Taking form as Bhabha’s performative, the narrative

subverts lines of patriarchy across different cultural contexts. « L’Autre [dans

ce cas la femme] peut adopter des points de vue très différents dans sa manière

de s’orienter face au groupe de référence, dans son désir … d’appartenance »

(Paterson 79). Performance thus becomes a strategy which allows these writers

to encode “new meaning in existing words” and encode their subjectivity and

identification process outside any “unhappy endings” (De Lotbinière-Harwood

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117). Thus reinvention or performance is their tool of negotiation between

cultural and linguistic codes, their version of creative connectivity, what De

De Lotbinière-Harwood names “hybrid vigor” (86)

Subjectivity and the Female Immigrant Voice

In the active negotiation of connectivity between different cultural

codes, feminine subjectivity and the immigrant voice are shaped, defined and

challenged by images of a North American white female voice. « Ce sont alors

les images du passé qui permettent au narrateur de se construire petit à petit

une nouvelle identité » (Paterson 162). Standards of beauty for instance are

modelled after images of white beauty. Such particularities create, at times, a

rather complex arena of negotiation and acceptance for the immigrant female

voice, one that is contradictory, yet compelling in nature. De Lotbinière-

Harwood reminds us that “trying to make the feminine…in any language, [or

culture] is first and foremost an act of resistance” (86). The protagonists in

Goto’s and Hong Kingston’s works of fiction and Hoffman’s and Anzaldúa’s

life narratives are tropes of resistance in varying degrees. They cannot pinpoint

their subjectivity inside fixed zones of cultural femininity encoded in their

minority culture. They must also challenge white zones of cultural femininity

to define their hybrid female voices as ones of value. Code-switching between

different cultural and linguistic contexts allows them the opportunity to name

how they wish to negotiate their female voice, as a continual state of

becoming. As they move between different cultures and languages, their

version of feminine subjectivity becomes richer and more complex. Their

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particular form of code-switching results in a more fluid form of feminine

hybridity. This fluidity is explored through the notion of desire, desire for a

recreated self and a recreated connection with Others. I understand this fluidity

as a heartfelt transfer since « le cœur est l’organe du désir » (Barthes,

Fragments d’un discours amoureux 63). While identity is negotiated as an act

of resistance in these works, the dominant and dominating force is how each

writer expresses a desire to break away from fixed models of feminine

subjectivity.

Outside a negotiation of individual feminine identity, these writers also

explore their desire for community and its notion of appartenance or what I

name ontological security (borrowed from sociologist Anthony Giddens).

Because the female voice is colored by a landscape of different cultural codes,

this desire is not easily fulfilled. I understand this coloring process, a push-

and-pull between cultural codes, as « un mode de circulation, d’interaction et

de fusion imprévisible » (Simon, Hybridité Culturelle 19). Thus hybrid

feminine subjectivity is shaped by a coming together and separation of what it

means to be immigrant and Other where « les signes de la culture [féminine de

nos jours en Amérique du nord] ne renvoient pas à des histoires fixes mais à

un présent en mouvement » (20). This idea of a present en movement is the in-

between space from which these writers re-script feminine identity, one that is

shaped, influenced and marked through relationships. Cultural code-switching

is therefore an important marker of identity construction in the works I focus

on in this chapter. Each writer’s wish to create feminine subjectivity as a fluid

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concept suggests that these writers wish to bring a certain degree of originality

to the term feminine subjectivity, one outside fixed or dominant cultural codes

(as understood inside a North American context of white feminine subjectivity

and Other fixed spaces). This need for originality reveals itself through the

way these writers construct and portray relationships in their works.

Seeking originality through comparison is a difficult process since this

would inevitably promote classifications of inferiority or superiority.

Originality takes on real meaning when it challenges and conquers stereotypes.

« Lorsque la relation est originale, le stéréotype est ébranlé, dépassé, évacué »

(Barthes, Roland Barthes 45). Just as Barthes’ relation privilégiée implies

connectivity on an intimate level (outside a group context), originality imposes

a creative understanding and therefore connectivity in how relationships are

formed remains outside stereotypes and preconceived ideas. This creative

aspect of connectivity scripts feminine subjectivity in each writer’s work as

hybrid.

Hiromi Goto

In Goto’s work of fiction Chorus of Mushrooms, the process and active

negotiation of connectivity between cultural codes is illustrated as an

imaginative self-exploration and an imaginative reconstruction of cultural

spaces. It is a story of “collective belonging … [and] differing forms of

collective identification” (Beauregard 3). Goto’s work picks up from Joy

Kogawa’s Obasan, an exploration of group identity as a silenced voice.

Obasan’s silence (the old woman in this story) juxtaposes the old woman in

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Goto’s work who speaks incessantly in Japanese. Obasan is a bleak

representation of the plight of the Japanese/Canadian immigrant experience.

The slashes in this context illustrate a complete division of this group from

Canadian society. The dispersal of the Japanese Canadian population during

and after WWII is largely the cause of the group’s loss of community and

Canadian belonging.i I understand Obasan as an examination of group

identity and how “through the understanding of individual experiences ...

social structure shapes and mediates identities, experiences, and interactions”

demonstrating “how it excludes some people and prevents many ... from truly

knowing about each other” (James, 3-4). Moreover social structures are

personified through the notion of “everything old” and so “every old woman

… every hamlet in the world ... stands as ... the bearer of keys to unknown

doorways and to a network of astonishing tunnels” (Kogawa 16). This value

assigned to the old woman is omnipresent in Kogawa’s and Goto’s writing.

Both writers carve a creative niche for themselves by illustrating how group

identity can develop a voice through literature. As Kogawa states, from “the

stream down and down to the hidden voice” emerges “the freeing word”

(Kogawa, 1). This hidden or freeing word in Goto’s writing is her use of

storytelling, a weapon to promote biculturalism. The storytellers in Goto’s

work, the protagonists, illustrate the important role stories play in how they

connect them to family and intimate relationships and in defining their

feminine subjectivity.

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Murasaki and her grandmother Naoe negotiate and name their female

voice inside a framework of Japanese and Canadian cultural codes. They

empower their voices as Japanese/Canadian women thus symbolically erasing

labels that stereotype them as silenced racialized or gendered, therefore

excluded Other Canadians. Their personal relationship is a strong symbol of

collective family love and cultural pride. In Barthesian terms,

Je-t-aime est sans ailleurs. C’est le mot de la dyade (maternelle,

amoureuse); en lui, nulle distance, nulle difformité ne vient cliver le

signe; il n’est métaphore de rien (Fragments d’un discours amoureux

176).

Indeed, Murasaki and Naoe manage to communicate with each other across

barriers of space and time. Theirs is a spiritual connection. As a result, they

share a heightened sense of awareness of one another, originality in how they

communicate, and in how they resist the stereotypes of their Japanese feminine

subjectivity. They renegotiate a “postmodern ethnicity” rescripting themselves

as “reinvented and renegotiated” Japanese/Canadian women (Ang, “On Not

Speaking Chinese” 18). They also illustrate the importance of connectivity

between cultures through their intimate exchanges with men. These

relationships form another crucial aspect of the symbolic reconstruction of

each woman’s marginalized voice. Storytelling is their greatest weapon of

resistance against stereotypes and fixed cultural codes. Like a patchwork quilt,

their separate stories when sewn together form a complete catalogue of

culturally named references between “present locations [and] imagined

homeland” (Beauregard 33). I view their particular process of storytelling as

an instrumental tool in how they bring together different feminine

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subjectivities. Stories allow Murasaki and Naoe to insinuate interdependence

between their Japanese and immigrant Canadian female voices, thus narrating

feminine subjectivity inside Bhabha’s third space of hybridity. By narrating

their stories through a mixture of mythological and real events, storytelling “is

revealed as an encounter in which teller and listener are mutually at risk”

(McCullough, “Trust Me: Responding to the Threat of Writing in Chorus of

Mushrooms” 151). Storytelling also becomes a hybrid arena of exchange and

creation, a marriage of different literary codes.

In Woman Native Other, Trinh T. Minh-ha looks upon the act of

writing as a sketched window on the world. In her words, “whether one

assumes it clear-sightedly or not, by writing one situates oneself vis-à-vis both

society and the nature of literature, that is to say creation” (20). I understand

Goto’s writing along these terms. Murasaki and Naoe share an intimate

connection with each other and they tell stories across barriers of time and

space, often conflating their realities with their stories. This form of mythical,

almost magical storytelling allows them to bridge linguistic and generational

barriers “to create a world of their own, make order out of chaos, heighten

their awareness of life, transcend their existences, discover themselves,

communicate their feelings, or speak to others” (Minh-ha, 21). Storytelling, a

mix of fantasy and Japanese folk-tale becomes a technique to create original

relationships outside stereotypes.

Murasaki’s involvement with a nameless Japanese immigrant who does

not speak English is a symbolic contestation “against dominant codes … an act

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of desire” (Goto, “The Irreversible Skin” 8). This involvement permits her to

blur the lines between her Canadian and lost Japanese self. The fact that her

lover remains nameless in her narrative suggests that he is the symbolic trope

of Murasaki’s abandoned Japanese self. By engaging in a sexual relationship

with a Japanese immigrant and creating an intimate bond with him, she

metaphorically embodies “a reversible skin” thus repossessing her lost

Japanese self (8). She re-fits and renames pieces of a Japanese femininity into

her already named Canadian identity. Masculine voices in this work occupy a

largely passive role. In his essay “Femininity”, Sigmund Freud refers to

masculine as active and and feminine as passive (114). Murasaki’s sexual

relationship with a nameless Japanese immigrant is an active engagement.

Through “the single act of sexual union” and the re-telling of Japanese stories

with her lover, Murasaki crawls inside her Japanese skin (114). She

simultaneously enters Butler’s vision of feminine subjectivity by doing rather

than simply naming herself (115). Murasaki’s nameless Japanese lover is her

“irreversible skin” a “simple matter of either/or … flip[ped] inside outside”

(Goto, “The Irreversible Skin” 8). If we return to Spivak’s process of naming

feminine subjectivity, we understand how the Other’s participation in the

naming process is a fundamental aspect of how naming is a key element of

cultural identity. Moreover by conflating sexual intimacy with the naming

process, both processes become an intimate venue of connectivity between

cultures. Dialogues with her Japanese lover suggest that Murasaki assigns the

masculine voice a more-or-less passive role, one that is negotiated and defined

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inside translations of feminine subjectivity. In doing so, she provides her

feminine subjectivity with a more authorial voice. It is a place “where words

have authority, [of] some true and untouched place that does not mutter what

has been said before ... and make[s] in the very telling a proof of authenticity”

(Susan Griffin qtd. in Minh-ha, 21). The manner in which Murasaki re-scripts

her voice leads me to understand her behaviour and her feminine subjectivity

as a form of resistance against masculine authority.

Inadvertently, she responds to Freud’s affirmation that “even in the

sphere of human sexual life you soon see how inadequate it is to make

masculine behaviour coincide with activity and feminine with passivity”

(Freud 115). Murasaki reads their love story as an “us at this

moment...committed to this love story right now” (Goto, Chorus of

Mushrooms 184-185). However I read this admission as a moment of complete

abandonment to her Japanese naming process where sexual engagement with

her nameless lover represents a symbolic fusion between her Japanese and

Canadian selves. Embracing her Japanese lover completely means she gives

his voice cultural importance. He becomes, along with her grandmother Naoe,

the cultivator of Murasaki’s Japanese growth.

Murasaki’s process of “retelling and re-creating” her moments (Goto,

Chorus of Mushrooms 185) illustrate Minh-ha’s claim that a “distinction needs

to be made between “write yourself” and “write about yourself, your body,

your inner life, your fears, inhibitions, desires, and pleasures” (Minh-ha 28). In

fact, Murasaki’s process of storytelling mirrors the distinction Minh-ha makes

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between writing yourself and writing about yourself; she does both!

Murasaki’s stories are chains, interlocked and interconnected inside her

grandmother’s and her Japanese lover’s presence. Each story is a separate link

in how Murasaki rewrites herself, creatively linking her Canadian and

Japanese selves. Storytelling allows her to re-script her past and frame her

present inside a more hybrid feminine subjectivity, one that is a mixture of

Japanese desire and Canadian savvy. She explains how “the words give the

shape to what will happen...telling our future before it ever does” (Goto,

Chorus of Mushrooms 186). Since the journey is an individual one, Murasaki’s

Japanese lover remains nameless for two reasons in this story. As mentioned

earlier, his presence allows Murasaki to define her Japanese naming process

inside a framework of desire. His nameless status also shifts the focus to how

Murasaki connects more intimately with her Japanese feminine subjectivity.

However her Japanese baptism (of sorts) remains contextualized inside an

English Canadian cultural naming.

As a new immigrant, her Japanese lover cannot fully appreciate this

dichotomy until he begins an exploration of his masculine subjectivity, his

naming process, inside an English Canadian framework. Murasaki affirms the

importance of this journey he has yet to embark upon, what I understand as a

“gathering on the edge of ‘foreign’ cultures … gathering in the … fluency of

another’s language” (Bhabha, “Dissemination” The Location of Culture 199).

Like Murasaki, her nameless lover needs to embrace a bicultural identity

which he cannot do until he learns English. “He just got here, but he has to

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arrive. You can’t move on until you’ve arrived” (Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms

198). By connecting with her lost Japanese subjectivity, Murasaki understands

that she has “finally arrived and now … [she] can go” (198). As a consequence

of being a new immigrant, Murasaki’s lover has not necessarily been exposed

to many English Canadian cultural codes. Without articulating the point

overtly, Murasaki suggests that his process of arrival is, as a result,

incomplete. Her focus on departure and arrival between cultures may be

understood as desire for Other cultures. I believe that she is suggesting that he

cannot move forward until there is a marriage of sorts between his existing

Japanese naming and his yet undiscovered Canadian naming. I understand this

marriage between departure and arrival as a marriage between different

cultural codes and this marriage cannot be consummated without movement

between cultures. Murasaki takes on the role of Clifford’s traveler between

cultures, redefining her voice as a Barthesian « l’autre qui part ... en état de

perpetual départ, de voyage » (Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux

19). She transmits this desire for travel to her lover by encouraging him to

write his story as he wishes. “When I’m finished my story, you can start

another if you want” (Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms 186). Murasaki learns,

through Naoe, how “it’s easy to travel [cultural] distances if you fly on a bed

of stories” (29) that through storytelling ‘we hold the power to change our

lives for ourselves’ (186). In this vein, Murasaki’s lover can only completely

arrive and then depart once he learns this process of re-scripting and re-tells

his story in the same way Murasaki and Naoe have done.

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Naoe’s journey differs from her granddaughter’s because she steps

outside her Japanese culture to explore English Canadian cultural codes. Naoe

challenges and negotiates her feminine subjectivity across color lines, age

restrictions, language barriers, and ultimately sexual meaning. Unlike

Murasaki’s sexual connection with her nameless lover, Naoe names her

Albertan cowboy Tengu. There are many different definitions of Tengu in

Chinese, Korean, and Japanese culture. In many ways, Goto paints Naoe as a

satirical caricature. She is larger than life, an oversexed wild woman far

removed from typical cultural images of a grandmother in her eighties. For this

reason, I have chosen to translate Tengu as a satirical caricature. In his essay

“Buddhism and Cartoons in Japan” Martin Repp explains how

“humor…assumes the double character of entertainment and criticism” (Repp

187). Tengu assumes the role of entertainer and critic in Naoe’s negotiation of

English cultural codes. He also takes on the role of muse (normally a feminine

construct), by encouraging her artistic inspirations. Moreover, the reader is not

surprised to learn that Tengu has lived in Japan.

Oh, I wuz doin’ a comparative study on the origins ‘n developminta

Japanese enka ‘n if ther any parallels with the developmenta country ‘n

western in North America (Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms 111).

This declaration breaks down stereotypes readers may have of the white rural

cowboy as a homebody. Tengu reveals that he is cultured and well-informed

about cultural issues. Thus Tengu can also be assigned the role of Clifford’s

traveler and foreign correspondent. Moreover, his articulation of words is a

parody in itself since Tengu converses with Naoe in Japanese and she hears

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him in English. Tengu’s role as a comical caricature is further highlighted by

the name Naoe assigns him. The Tengu zoshi comes from the Kamkura period

(1296) and in Buddhist terms it is about the “the bishop [a Buddhist monk]

who transforms into a Tengu [a selfish and arrogant] … devil” (Repp 192).ii

In their story, it is clear that Tengu placates and pleases Naoe in any way he

can. He is her muse and her sexual toy and Naoe steers their story as she

wishes.

On the one hand, by naming an English Albertan Tengu, Naoe

metaphorically seduces and beds a devilish Buddhist monk. In doing so, she

enters taboo zones, contesting Japanese cultural codes on two levels. First she

engages in a sexual relationship with a stranger. Second, she does so with a

symbolic monk, perhaps a metaphorically spiritual engagement. In both

instances, she illustrates her rebellious nature and her wish to define herself

outside traditional visions of Japanese or Canadian feminine subjectivity. Then

by naming herself Purple, an English translation of Murasaki, Naoe weaves

her stories and her identity with those of her granddaughter. Both women

embody their feminine subjectivity inside the creative and literary veil of the

first female Japanese writer – an anti-hero. Storytelling allows Naoe and

Murasaki to embrace Japanese femininity in empowering terms. Naoe admits

however that “the words of an old woman can change little in this world and

nothing of the past so why this torrent of words ... [she] only know[s] [she]

must” (Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms 21). Living inside her bed of stories,

sharing stories with her granddaughter and later her Albertan lover allow Naoe

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to empower her otherwise marginalized self. Naoe begins reciting stories to

her granddaughter in Japanese well before Murasaki has learnt the language.

Naoe does not believe that Murasaki’s linguistic understanding of the language

is important. She believes that even if “she [Murasaki] cannot understand the

words ... she can read the lines on [her] brow, the creases beside [her] mouth”

(Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms15). Naoe admits that she could speak “the other

[meaning English] ... but [her] lips refuse and [her] tongue swells in revolt”

(15). Listening to stories in Japanese develops Murasaki’s ear for her language

of origin, creating an innate desire to learn Japanese, which she eventually

does. Naoe’s refusal to speak in English to her granddaughter is an act of

resistance that symbolically cloaks her as Murasaki’s Japanese guide and

mentor.

Like storytelling, the naming process in this work is a tool of feminine

empowerment and cultural reaffirmations. It is also as Steve McCullough

states, a narrative “in which teller and listener are mutually at risk ... where

trust is responsible for the unique existence of each and for the relation

between words and worlds” (151). When Naoe re-scripts her granddaughter’s

English Canadian name from Muriel to Murasaki, she metaphorically

embodies her as writer (naming her after the first Japanese female who writes

a novel in late tenth century Japan). Story shapes personality as much as

personality shapes story in this work. The process of re-scripting empowers

Murasaki with a Japanese femininity and as a Japanese storyteller thus

allowing her to address her repressed Japanese subjectivity creatively and

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empower any zones of “unavoidable vulnerability” (151). This moment marks

the beginning of Murasaki’s quest to discover the lost parts of her Japanese

self largely through storytelling. This art of storytelling passed down to her by

Naoe gives Murasaki a stronger voice as she negotiates her identity between

her English Canadian experiences and her Japanese ones. In addition, by

conflating Muriel’s voice with that of Japan’s first storyteller and feminist

hero, Murasaki, Naoe empowers Murasaki’s female voice artistically and

intellectually. She thus transforms “the relationship between fiction and truth

[into] a matter of readerly trust” (152). This re-scripting of her female voice

allows Murasaki to question and challenge stereotypical, negative or

marginalized images of women. As storyteller she reassigns her feminine

subjectivity in empowering ways.

Thus when Naoe adopts an English translation of her granddaughter’s

name and calls herself Purple, she marks her symbolic entry as a bicultural

Japanese and Canadian citizen. “The self [or selves] to which these names

refer is [or are] ambiguous ... and collapsing them into a single character is a

profoundly ... interpretive strategy” (159). Until this renaming process occurs,

Naoe remains inside an entirely Japanese cloak never actively experiencing

English Canadian culture. However by nicknaming herself Purple, Naoe enters

an English Canadian arena. This re-scripting and renaming process allows

Naoe to empower and interpret her identity on her terms. Names are not

simply a method of personal identification in this work, they become tools to

“explore an interpersonal reality: a social reality…within the poetic image…a

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community reclaimed in the making of a name” (“Culture’s In-Between”,

Bhabha 158). Naoe explains that she deliberately allows others, such as her

daughter Keiko, to see her as an old woman who only speaks Japanese. She

admits that she “can learn French as well as the English people don’t think I

already know” (Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms 37). What Naoe and Murasaki

ultimately affirm is their desire to wear Japanese as a poetically reversible

skin, one that grows from the inside out because “you cannot move to a foreign

land and call that place home because you parrot the words around you. [You

must ] [f]ind your home inside yourself first” (48). This idea of finding home

inside yourself is an important aspect of creative connectivity and Bhaba’s

performative because it illustrates the importance of drawing new lines from

within. For Naoe this means that she must let her “home words grow out from

the inside, not from the outside in” (48). Through such comments, Naoe

asserts the importance of drawing lines on her terms so how others read those

parts of her that are innately Japanese are illustrated as she wishes and not as

they may be assigned to her by others. Holding onto her Japanese culture and

language also leads Naoe to embrace a bicultural Japanese/Canadian identity.

Unlike Naoe, Murasaki’s parents have already embraced Canadian

culture by assimilating. They therefore do not play an active role in how

Murasaki recreates her identity as biculturally Japanese and Canadian.

However Murasaki reactivates her parents’ Japanese subjectivity. Food

triggers their re-entry. “Every day we ate supper around midnight, food I had

made from the Japanese cookbook” (153). Their re-entry is complete when

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Murasaki prepares Tonkatsu (also their family name), a traditional Japanese

dish. This dish affirms the idea that “eating’s a part of being” (138). “It pays

homage to Asian cuisine, acknowledges the role of eating as essence, as

survival, both physical and psychological, and finally rewrites food images in

new hybrid contexts” (Beautell 33). Sitting down for a meal as a family,

ingesting Tonkatsu they metaphorically ingest their Japanese culture. “Eating

Tonkatsu in the heavy silence between night and dawn, a strange configuration

… as if everything we never said burst forth and we forgave each other for all

our shortcomings” (Goto 153). This is a critical moment of creative

connectivity in the story, in Murasaki’s words, “a chrysalis time” of Japanese

rebirth (153).

Just as the notion of biculturalism dominates Kogawa’s narrative, it is

an important aspect of how Goto illustrates the importance languages play in

rebuilding broken communities and cultures. Thus there is connective value in

ingesting culture through food. It is an important example of cultural repair.

Living with her daughter, Naoe has no voice in selecting and preparing

Japanese food. Discouraged by her daughter’s assimilation into Canadian

culture, watching her conversion “from rice and daikon to wieners and beans”

she begins to notice how “Western food has changed” her, made her “more

opaque” (13). So she secretly orders shipments of dried salted squid which she

shares with her young granddaughter. Murasaki “sneaks the packages up to”

her grandmother’s room “when everyone is asleep” (15). These secret food

sharing sessions mark Murasaki’s entry into her Japanese cultural skin. Thus

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name changing and eating form important aspects of how Murasaki, her

parents and Naoe creatively connect with their Japanese identity.

Naoe’s relationship with an Albertan allows her to explore a Canadian

Other skin marking her entry as a bicultural citizen. This meeting marks

another important process of (re)scripting identity. This time Naoe renames

her cowboy Tengu. By embodying him as a figure of Japanese folklore, she

invites (metaphorically speaking) a “white rural Albertan” to enter bicultural

spaces as “Japanese Canadian ... [thus] joining the “we” of eating, of

storytelling ... of sexuality” (Libin 135). Murasaki’s relationship with a newly

arrived Japanese immigrant is another metaphoric engagement between

Murasaki and her lost Japanese self and it marks her bicultural entry. Sexual

engagement with these men is a symbolic ingestion or union between cultures.

Connecting on an intimate level with these men allows Naoe and Murasaki to

satisfy unfulfilled desires and establish a creative connectivity between

different cultural worlds. This connectivity signals their negotiation of hybrid

subjectivity and Murasaki’s rejection of her mother’s assimilation process.

Keiko defends her decision, explaining that “you can't be everything at once.

It is too confusing for a child to juggle two cultures.... If you live in Canada,

you should live like a Canadian and that's how I raised my own daughter”

(Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms 189). However, by engaging in relationships

with men outside the cultural contexts of their immediate environment,

Murasaki and Naoe refute this argument. Instead they choose to share a degree

of “multiplicité…un tissage entre différentes réalités, une possibilité

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d’harmonie parce que c’est multiple” (De Lotbinière-Harwood 174). Together

they challenge cultural specificity and the idea that you cannot wear different

cultural codes successfully. Thus biculturalism in this work is an important

example of creative connectivity between Japanese people and their Canadian

spaces.

Maxine Hong Kingston

The focus in Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiography is more

implicitly bicultural. However cultural duality and an Americanized female

rebellion allow her to reconfigure herself as an empowered bicultural

Chinese/American. Perhaps her strongest weapon of reconfiguration is

illustrated through her re-scription of Fa Mulan, traditional Chinese heroine

taken from the ancient Chinese ballad “The Magnolia Lay.” In The Woman

Warrior, Hong Kingston’s Chinese and American selves cannot be dissociated

from her vision of a socially and culturally defined female voice. By engaging

the reader in a multi-vocal narration of factual and mythological stories, she

asserts her marginal and liminal spaces as a Chinese/American woman. She

negotiates feminine subjectivity through an Americanized version of being

Chinese, rather than relying on her mother’s more traditional views. Just as

storytelling is a key element of how Goto empowers her protagonists, talk-

story is Hong Kingston’s prescription for empowerment. She crosses many

boundaries in her narration moving between fact and fiction to identify and

rewrite the Chinese and American cultural binaries that challenge her sense of

self-hood. Perhaps most effective is her style in bringing together Chinese

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myth and American individualism. Hong Kingston’s cultural world may be

understood as “the medium of the present ... that mediates the past” (Lowe 2).

I understand this relational value between the past and the present as

movement between Bhabha’s performative and pedagogy. It is how Hong

Kingston “becomes, acts, and speaks” as Chinese/American (3). Hong

Kingston’s Chinese self-image is negatively influenced by expressions she

hears from her mother and other family members, expressions such as “girls

are maggots in the rice…it is more profitable to raise geese than daughters”

(Hong Kingston 43). Hong Kingston’s self-image is also greatly affected by

her American environment. She admits that because “the immigrants … have

loud voices un-modulated to American tones” she has “tried to turn [her]self

American-feminine” (11). Hong Kingston explores her identity as Clifford’s

traveler by cloaking her Chinese female voice inside an Americanized

feminine subjectivity. She cannot completely define herself inside one or the

other. Yet she wishes to avoid being seen “as an immigrant, as the foreigner-

within” (Lowe 5). For instance, as a Chinese woman she learns that “there is

an outward tendency in females … getting straight A’s for the good of [her]

future husband’s family…. [So she] stopped getting straight A’s” (Hong

Kingston 47). Hong Kingston refuses this role as a foreigner-within. While she

does not wish to reject the possibility of experiencing love with a Chinese

man, she discovers that her efforts to attract the attention of Chinese boys

contradict Asian beauty standards because to do so means having to make

herself “American-pretty” to attract the five or six Chinese boys in the class”

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to fall in love with her (12). Ironically this meant that “everyone else – the

Caucasian, Negro, and Japanese boys – would” be attracted to her as well (12).

Hong Kingston’s desire to turn herself American-pretty is an illustration of

how her perceptions of beauty are entangled inside an American vision of

beauty. This duality between wanting a relationship with a Chinese boy and

wishing to be American-pretty shapes aspects of Hong Kingston’s hybrid

frame of subjectivity and her “emergence of alternate identities” as

Chinese/American (Lowe 12). Who is Hong Kingston empowering? Is it the

Chinese woman with an American perspective or is it an American woman

inside an encoded Chinese cultural context? This is an important distinction. I

understand Hong Kingston’s cultural negotiation as an exchange between an

American woman’s mind and a Chinese woman’s heart. For instance, she

empowers herself by re-scripting Fa Mulan’s voice as her own, thus turning a

Chinese “foreign other I [my emphasis]” into an American “familiar I [again,

my emphasis] (Smith 47).

Hong Kingston’s strongest weapon of negotiation or resistance to fixed

cultural codes appears in those instances when she conflates lived realities

with invented and mythological stories. Her struggles to put some distance

between herself and her family suggest that she cannot come to terms with

markers of her Chinese female identity. However these struggles also allow

her to re-imagine her Chinese spaces. By conflating myth with fact, for

instance, she asserts her marginal spaces as Chinese. This allows her to

effectively empower her Chinese/American female voice. Paul Ricœur’s

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reference to the “narrative unity of life…as an unstable mixture of fabulation

and actual experience” suggests that all narrated experience is such a mixture

(162). In this vein, Hong Kingston’s conflation between myth and personal

experience may be understood as a needed tool of contestation in her

negotiation between being American and Chinese. “Hybridity ... marks the

history of survival within relationships of unequal power and domination”

(Lowe 67). Conflation of fabulation and actual experience is therefore also a

core aspect in how the hybrid self emerges in this work. Like Goto, Hong

Kingston relies on mythological figures to redefine feminine subjectivity

outside fixed cultural contexts, therefore in more hybrid and empowering

terms.

Hong Kingston accomplishes this through the idea of talk-story which

originates from a Hawaiian pidgin language. She engages her reader in her

particular meaning-making process and reasserts her silenced, marginalized

voice as a Chinese/American woman. Talk-story becomes a metaphor for

knowing herself differently. By interweaving mythological tales with real

experiences, Hong Kingston reconstructs her feminine otherness in a more

positive way. She reacts to “struggle between the desire to essentialize [her]

ethnic identity and the condition of heterogeneous difference against which

such a desire is spoken” (Lowe 76). Re-scripting the story of Fa Mulan is an

act of empowerment. Fa Mulan is a legendary Chinese symbol of female

“heroic behaviour” (written in the fifth or sixth century A.D.). Hong Kingston

narrates Fa Mulan in the first person as her own story thus naming herself

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heroine and warrior (Hong Kingston 24). Whereas Murasaki and Naoe simply

rename themselves to assert a certain literary identity, Hong Kingston re-

scripts herself more completely creatively connecting her vision of a Chinese

woman empowered inside an American cultural environment. Fa Mulan is a

story about a girl “who took her father’s place in battle” becoming a renowned

warrior and swordswoman (24). By speaking of Fa Mulan in the first person,

Hong Kingston not only assumes her identity as an alter-ego in her life

narrative, she also re-writes her own role from woman as victim to one of

woman as victor. Such an act of resistance, albeit a Ricœurian fabulation,

allows Hong Kingston to create an empowered image of her

Chinese/American identity. Thus she equips herself to symbolically conquer

negative perceptions of being Chinese. This also allows her to wear symbolic

armour against the “business-suited…modern American executive…each boss

two feet taller…and impossible to meet eye to eye” and the Chinese who

believed women “failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves” (48). In the

preceding quotation, she illustrates how a physical challenge, her height,

impedes her sense of self-esteem. Being Fa Mulan, Hong Kingston is a wife

and swordswoman, not a slave. Moreover this re-scripting allows Hong

Kingston to actively participate in her mother’s narratives, re-weaving talk-

story on her terms and letting the story re-write her feminine subjectivity in an

empowering manner. Thus talk story is her ultimate tool of resistance.

As Fa Mulan, Hong Kingston is a Chinese warrior woman, a wife, a

mother and she still maintains a strong self-image. If an act of resistance

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means repeating something in a different way, Hong Kingston blends her

personal story with the mythological one of Fa Mulan as a symbolic gesture of

resistance. Robert Kroestsch said that “in a sense, we haven’t got an identity

until somebody tells our story. The fiction makes us real” (Creation 65). Re-

scripting her identity as Fa Mulan allows Hong Kingston to subvert the sense

of inferiority she experiences as a Chinese woman, and subsequently deal with

feelings that symbolically keep her locked inside a culture which appears to

honour men over women. In Nicole Brossard’s words, « [j]e sais qu’écrire

c’est se faire exister, comme décider de ce qui existe et de ce qui n’existe pas,

c’est comme décider de la réalité » (La lettre aérienne 130-31). By conflating

Fa Mulan’s story with her own, Hong Kingston empowers herself in two ways.

First, she (re)constructs her experiences to assume a position of leadership,

strength and honour inside her Chinese skin. Second, as Brossard suggests,

Hong Kingston writes herself as she wishes to be rather than having her

identity written by others. Through this re-writing, she demonstrates her

creative connectivity with and confrontation between her American/Chinese

identities. By framing herself as a Chinese mythological hero she validates her

otherwise marginalized position as a Chinese woman. Hong Kingston’s desire

to re-script herself as Fa Mulan illustrates her desire to (re)invent identity, to

create a present self by adopting a mythological representation of an Other that

corresponds to her vision of a feminine Chinese and American self. Hong

Kingston seeks identity outside classifications and yet she is trapped by

classifications, real and invented. This is reminiscent of Jacques Lacan’s

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thoughts on the gaze. “What determines me at the most profound level, in the

visible, is the gaze that is outside” (qtd. In Ty 10). This outside gaze is

sometimes Chinese, other times American.

Hong Kingston’s writing shifts between personal experience and myth

in this way as a negotiation technique between how she views herself and

perhaps how she wishes to contest the outside gaze. In this conflation process,

she has the freedom to create discontinuity between how she reads herself, and

subsequently how she wishes to be read, through Paterson’s illustration of

la relation entre l’Autre et le ‘je’ ou le ‘nous’ du groupe de

référence…celui d’une manque créé par la présence de désirs

inassouvis, de souffrances multiples, de déceptions accrues, le rapport à

l’Autre devient tellement crucial, parce que fondé sur l’espoir d’un

autre mode de ‘présence à soi’, qu’il ouvre facilement la voie au

fantasme…un lien-subtil, mais fondamental, relie fascination, désir et

fantasme’ (Paterson 69-70).

Discontinuity between Hong Kingston’s Chinese/American selves may be

understood through the preceding quotation. Hong Kingston negotiates her

feminine subjectivity in the same manner Paterson designates the Other as a

space of fascination, desire and fantasy. In doing so, Hong Kingston

symbolically collapses the boundaries between her Chinese self and American

Other selves. She also subverts boundaries of male patriarchy (Chinese and

American) that clash with her vision of female individualism by blending real

experiences with mythological talk story. Hong Kingston plays with different

narrative voices and “produces a multivoiced narrative ... both American and

Chinese” to (re)write feminine subjectivity (Jenkins 61).

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According to Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, there are four ‘I’s’ in an

autobiographical narrative: the real or historical I, the narrating I, the narrated

I, and finally the ideological I (59). Each one is relevant inside a time and

space specific context. Hong Kingston’s narrative resurrects her ideological I

through “women and their stories that have been silenced” (Jenkins 61). The

reader has access to the narrating I and s/he absorbs and interprets information

according to how the narrating I choose to tell his or her story. The narrating I

is “neither unified nor stable…split, fragmented, provisional, multiple, (it is) a

subject (who is) always in the process of coming together and of dispersing”

(60). Hong Kingston (re)scripts her mother’s talk-stories thus (re)naming

herself as the authorial/historical I in these stories. The narrated I is the

protagonist of the story and for the reader, perhaps the most stable I in

autobiography. The ideological I is the “concept of personhood culturally

available to the narrator when he (or she) tells his (or her) story” (Paul Smith

qtd. in Smith and Watson 61). Hong Kingston embodies all these different

narrative forms in her writing. However since cultural concepts are time and

space dependent, this I is also “multiple and…potentially conflictual” (62). If

the only I the reader has no access to is the author’s real or historical I because

the writer is relating experiences based on memory then in Hong Kingston’s

case talk-story allows her symbolic access to this I. She “weaves together the

secret life of her “forerunner” aunt, her mother’s talk-stories, and her own

severed tongue to produce a talk-story memoir” hybridly Chinese/American

(Jenkins 62). In Hong Kingston’s narrative, there is no way to categorically

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ascertain real or historical accuracy. This should not be the focus of how we

interpret her narrative style.

Hong Kingston’s real or historical I has no universal meaning. It is an

entirely subjective narration. However, if we examine Hong Kingston’s

narrative inside the period in which it is written, we can attribute symbolic

labels to her real or historical I. Growing up in the U.S. in the 1950s and the

1960s Hong Kingston’s story is a product of the civil rights and women’s

liberation movements. The first chapter of her work No Name Woman

appeared in print as a short story in 1975, the year the United Nations

officially recognized March 8 as International Women’s Day. In this chapter,

Hong Kingston learns that her father’s sister in China becomes pregnant out of

wedlock. No Name Woman is a victim of repeated rape and involuntary sex

with someone from whom she has to buy oil and “gather wood in the same

forest” the place he first rapes her (Hong Kingston 7). However, when she tells

him she is pregnant, he organizes a town raid against her and her family.

“...they threw mud and rocks at the house…they threw eggs and began

slaughtering…the … smeared [animals] blood on the doors and walls of their

home” (4). No Name Woman subsequently kills herself and her baby. Hong

Kingston’s father never mentions his sister. When she begins her menstrual

cycle, her mother tells her the story as a warning not to shame the family.

“Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never

been born” (5). Hong Kingston begins her personal story with her aunt’s story

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thus illustrating her desire to give her dead aunt a voice, an identity, and a

story she could not claim while she was alive.

Re-scripting her autobiographical story to include stories of women

negatively othered because of cultural patriarchy is then a tool of

emancipation, a way to reinvent female subjectivity outside a male-dominated

value system. Revisionist theorists such as Nancy Chodorow, Dorothy

Dinnerstein and Jane Flax believe that

the configuration of identity and the process of individuation differ for

men and women … [where] the basic feminine sense of self is

connected to the world, the basic masculine sense of self is

separate…where the boy comes to speak with the authority of the

father and all fathers before him, those figures of public power who

control the discourse and its economy of self-hood, (where) the male

experience is identified as the normative human paradigm (Smith 13).

Hong Kingston’s writing style identifies her female experience as the

normative human paradigm. Moreover her autobiographical text employs

mythical and fictional representations of female narratives to challenge and

resist entrapments of patriarchy. She fictionalizes details to reconstruct the

lives of past ancestors and make sense of her marginalized present realities.

Talk-story allows her to shift the focus away from male-dictated cultural codes

transferring their power to female hands.

Talk-story is also a metaphor for knowing herself better. According to

Jean Starobinski, “no inside is conceivable…without the complexity of an

outside on which it relies….No outside would be conceivable without an

inside fending it off, resisting it, “reacting” to it (qtd in Rubenstein 5). Re-

scripting herself as Fa Mulan allows Hong Kingston to blur the boundaries

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between her inner, imaginary world with her outer reality. This is the most

significant chapter in Hong Kingston’s process of female empowerment. Hong

Kingston’s narrating I allows her to define individuality as an understanding of

one’s “relationship with the outside, with that which … (she has) never been”

(4-5). These opening lines from the chapter White Tiger set the tone for Hong

Kingston’s desire to reverse her role (and that of other women in her family)

from woman as victim to one of woman as victor.

When we Chinese girls listened to adult talk-story, we learned that…

we could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all

China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family.

Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet

bound (Hong Kingston 19).

In the preceding quotation, Hong Kingston turns an otherwise negative

stereotype about Chinese women with bound feet into an example of

empowerment. She does this by suggesting that perhaps women’s feet were

bound because women were very strong. Inadvertently, she also suggests that

the Chinese practice of feet binding stems from a male fear of female prowess.

Although this is pure heresy on her part, Hong Kingston chooses to interpret

the custom in this way. Nancy Chodorow suggests that

[d]ifferentiation is not distinctness and separateness, but a particular

way of being connected to others. This connection to others…enables

us to feel empathy and confidence that are basic to the recognition of

the other as self (qtd in Rubenstein 12).

Regardless of the reasons behind foot binding practices, Hong Kingston

clearly wishes to challenge and re-write aspects of Chinese cultural customs

that scorn or oppress the image of Chinese women.

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For instance, as Fa Mulan, Hong Kingston speaks of imprisoned female

servants, unable to escape because of their “little bound feet…these women

would not be good for anything” so their families refuse to have them back!

(Hong Kingston 44). Hong Kingston chooses to rewrite their story in more

empowering tones. So she suggests that “they turned into a band of

swordswomen…a mercenary army’ who only buy girl babies, who welcome

runaway slave-girls and daughter-in-laws, killing only boys and men” (44). As

Fa Mulan, Hong Kingston does not confirm the legitimacy of such an

outcome, stating that she “never encountered such women and (therefore she)

could not vouch for their reality” (45). However, she plays with such a

possibility to illustrate her desire to (re)write mythological events on her terms

and suggest that other outcomes are possible. More importantly, conflating Fa

Mulan’s story with “fact, embellishment, invention, and fantasy” become a

way for Hong Kingston to question and re-write past stories that deny Chinese

women an empowered voice (Rubenstein 165).

Of equal importance in how Hong Kingston wishes to rewrite negative

perceptions of Chinese women is her latent desire to re-script her American

identity in Chinese terms, thus laying the foundation for a hybrid self. Hong

Kingston cannot assimilate into American culture. She explains that her

“American life has been such a disappointment” (45). She blames her parents

for not teaching her English. As a consequence, she walks amidst hostile zones

at school, feeling “beaten up” for being an outsider (46). Her need to cloak

herself as Fa Mulan, a mythological swordswoman, symbolically shields her

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from such childhood feelings of marginalization. Moreover, Hong Kingston’s

desire to retell a Chinese myth in a new way suggests that she wishes to re-

shape existing perceptions of Chinese women. In his essay, “Towards a New

Identity: Maxine Hong Kingston’s Rewriting of Fa Mulan”, David Leal

Cobos, suggests that, as a storyteller, Hong Kingston, “adapts (the old myth) to

the new situation, the new audience, and the new media” (5). Cobbs also

reminds readers that “Hong Kingston is American-born. She was raised in the

United States in an American background and (she) had not been to China

when when she wrote The Warrior Woman” (5). Rescripting Fa Mulan as she

does illustrates her western perspective as a Chinese American woman, her

desire for creative connectivity between different cultural contexts. Purists

such as Frank Chin denounce Hong Kingston’s “representation of Chinese

culture” as “false and based on white stereotypes” (qtd. in Cobos 2). Chin

rejects “the works of Hong Kingston” stating that they “are not consistent with

Chinese fairy tales and childhood literature” (3). While there is some validity

in Chin’s point, he fails to recognize Hong Kingston’s context as a Chinese

American writer. In Sherry Simon’s words,

Au lieu de considérer ces espaces liminaires et transitionnels comme

imparfaits et donc inférieurs, il faudra y voir le lieu de la construction

de nouveaux signes d’identités … [et] l’imaginaire contemporain’ (54).

Here Simon speaks of geographic spaces in Montreal that bring together

different cultural groups, however the underlying message of nouveaux signes

d’identités may be applied to understand Hong Kingston’s vision of how she

wishes to (re)create a Chinese/American identity. Re-writing a mythological

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story on her terms permits Hong Kingston to re-script hybrid identity and

code-switch as a Chinese and American woman on her terms. She admits that

she “keep[s] old Chinese myths alive…by telling them in a new American

way” (Hong Kingston qtd. in Cheung 85). This process of invention is

necessary, even crucial, to how she constructs her individual, hybridized

Chinese/American identity. In this way, Hong Kingston validates her Chinese

and American identity on her terms. She empowers her “voice of difference …

to divert us from the monotony of sameness” (Minh-ha 88). Moreover by

asserting her difference she asserts her Third World voice and its relational

aspect with her First World voice. As Minh-ha reminds us,

The West is painfully made to realize the existence of a Third World in

the First World, and vice versa. The Master is bound to recognize that

His Culture is not as homogeneous as monolithic as He believed it to

be. He discovers, with much reluctance, He is just an other among

others” (Minh-ha 99).

As Minh-ha suggests, by illustrating the malleable role the Other occupies

along with the power of masculine subjectivity Third World writers such as

Hong Kingston find themselves caught in a state of “triple jeopardy” (104). It

is a zone where “she can be accused of betraying either man ... her community

... or woman herself” (104). Writers such as Hong Kingston must continually

address this triple-edged dilemma as Third World women. I understand this

process as a paradoxical one. Understanding herself and others outside one

cultural or linguistic code means Hong Kingston tackles Minh-ha’s questions:

“Did it really happen? Is it a true story?”(120). She answers such questions by

blurring lines between fiction and reality (120)

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The way Hong Kingston re-interprets the mythical story of Fa Mulan is

through time and space-specific cultural codes. If we turn to religious texts, it

is easy to understand this need. Imagine how suffocating, even self-erasing,

identity construction would be if religious dogma was respected in its original

word. There is a need, perhaps even an obligation to re-write, re-script past

written records if those interpretations no longer respond to a respectful view

of today’s more fluid cultural codes and representations of identity. This is

better understood from the point of view of historian versus storyteller. We can

understand historian under Bhabha’s notion of pedagogy and storyteller under

his label of the performative. The act of revealing bears in itself a magical (not

factual) quality ... through Minh-ha’s vision

history (with a small h) thus manages to oppose the factual to the

fictional ... the story-writer – the historian – to the storyteller. As long

as the transformation, manipulations, or redistributions inherent in the

collecting of events are overlooked, the division continues its course, as

sure of its itinerary as it certainly dreams to be. Story-writing becomes

history-writing, and history quickly sets itself apart, consigning story to

the realm of tale, legend, myth, fiction, literature (120).

Thus, rewriting or retelling (his)stories makes room for changes in

perspectives.

It seems reasonable that autobiographical telling is in essence

storytelling because events can never be completely verified. In the re-telling,

there will always be an element of remembering, perspective, creative

freedom, therefore elements of truth and fiction are continually at play. Hong

Kingston explains that she has “various ways of melding the Chinese and

Western experiences…[her] hands are writing English but (her) mouth is

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speaking Chinese [because she is] working in some kind of fusion language”

(Interview with Dave Welch and Miel Alegre Dec 2003). Hong Kingston is

clear that she is not representing the Chinese American group in her

autobiographical story. She asks “why must [she] represent anyone but

[herself]? Why should [she] be denied an individual artistic vision” of herself

(qtd. in Cobos 28). Hong Kingston fails to mention how her vision of selfhood,

her desire to represent herself as “an individual artistic vision” is determined,

by how others name her as a Chinese woman and as an American woman.

More importantly, although she claims to re-script her individual voice, she

also rewrites and subsequently re-scripts the roles of some key family

members: her mother Brave Orchid, and her aunts No Name Woman and

Moon Orchid. Looking outside the frame of storytelling, an ethical case may

be made to defend this re-scripting of family members and their stories. She

becomes a beacon of empowerment for other Chinese/American women who

feel marginalized as well as Other immigrant women who read her version of

feminine subjectivity. Such a re-scripting of stories allows her to empower the

collective Chinese female voice and her individual one. Her narrative blends

myth and real experience. As Fa Mulan, Hong Kingston is the family’s

ambassador, their swordswoman so she recognizes how “the idioms for

revenge are to “report a crime” and [how] … the reporting is the vengeance-

not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words” (Hong Kingston 53). Hong

Kingston rebels against a conventional or traditional Chinese feminine

subjectivity that contains her feminine subjectivity inside an inferior frame.

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She reacts strongly when she hears one of her parents say “feeding girls is

feeding cowbirds … [this would make her] thrash on the floor and scream so

hard … [she] couldn’t talk” (46). Hong Kingston defines her hybrid voice by

re-writing words such as “chink,” “gook,” words that “do not fit on [her hybrid

Chinese/American] skin” (53). Talk-story is a retelling of Hong Kingston’s life

experiences, a negotiation of her feminine subjectivity inside a hybridized

Chinese-American identity.

Eva Hoffman

In Lost in Translation, the lessons Eva Hoffman learns from family

differ from Goto’s protagonists and Hong Kingston’s personal experiences.

Hoffman’s life story is rooted in the history of a country, a people and families

(including her own) destroyed and traumatized by war. Much like oral

tradition, trauma is carried from one generation to another. Thus sharing the

burden of collective pain is about honoring one’s past and one’s ancestors.

“My mother wants me to know what happened….It’s a matter of honor to

remember…affirming one’s Jewishness….I lower my head in

acknowledgement that this-the pain of this-is where I come from, and that it’s

useless to try to get away” (Hoffman 24-25). Hoffman’s story winds down two

narrative roads: in one, she addresses her parents’ journey out of war torn

Poland, speaking of how their journey affects her lived experiences; in the

other, she maps out her process of self-representation as a path of continual

movement between her Polish and developing American cultural identities.

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She also speaks of first experiences as an immigrant in Canada, describing this

part of her story as a largely negative one.

In Hoffman’s autobiographical narrative Lost in Translation: A Life in

a New Language, she explores the in-between passages of her hybrid

subjectivity, her connectivity between languages and cultures, as Gloria

Anzaldúa does, in poetic terms. However her narrative is not as polemical as

Anzaldúa’s. Rather, it is laced inside a trauma narrative. Hoffman also scripts

her personal story inside a poetically constructed debate, shifting between her

Polish and English experiences. She seduces her readers into her particular

meaning-making process of representation, to reveal “how [she] has become

who…she is at a given moment in an ongoing process of reflection” (Smith

and Watson 1). Moreover, Hoffman grounds her “process of reflection” inside

the trauma narrative of her parents and their experiences of the Holocaust in

Poland. Like a patchwork quilt, Hoffman pieces together her Polish and

American identities, moving fluidly between parts. This fluidity is neither

linear in time nor in chronology. By jumping between past and present

contexts, geography, and narrating her parents’ trauma narrative alongside

hers, she illustrates how inextricably interwoven such life experiences are in

defining her subjectivity. Smith and Watson describe trauma narrative as a

complex process of “recalling and recreating a past life…organizing the

inescapable but often disabling force of memory and negotiating its

fragmentary intrusions with increasing, if partial, understanding” (22). Unlike

Hong Kingston and Goto, Hoffman does not employ myth or legend as a tool

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of female empowerment. She narrates her personal autobiographical story as a

postwar child. Her movement between languages and cultural codes translates

her experiences as a postwar child however in a reconstructive manner.

Although the healing of any trauma is an indefinite process of reconciliation,

peace and then reconstruction, this process is also a time of creative

connectivity. It is a period of deep reflection and therefore of understanding

and acceptance. Like the different pieces of a quilt, the morsels of Hoffman’s

cultural experiences in Poland, Canada, and finally the United States come

together to create an interesting tapestry, ultimately a hybridized, colored,

identity.

There is no linear sequence of time and space in her narrative. Her

story jumps between the past and present to illustrate the difficulties she faces

letting go of her past in Poland and accepting her new life in North America. I

read her narrative style as a musical composition, where the melodies come

together awkwardly at first, in bits and pieces through random movement

between past and present recollections. Moreover, this nonlinear narrative

technique mirrors Hoffman’s inability to keep her foot (symbolically) planted

upon one cultural soil. Moving from Poland to North America displaces and

divides her, making her see herself as a discriminated subject, culturally and

socio-economically. Her insecurities as an immigrant initially materialize

because of financial difficulties her family faces in Vancouver. Their story

begins with “no place to go, no way to pay for a meal” (Hoffman 104). In

Canada, Hoffman views her family’s immigrant status as an impoverished one.

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Later, as an adult, Hoffman continues to suffer from feelings of

marginalization in other ways. “Insofar as I’m an outsider wishing to be taken

in, I’ve come at the wrong moment…in the midst of all this…fragmenting

movement, [where] the…notion of outside and inside” is a splintered one

(196). Inside such fragmented spaces, inside her parents’ Holocaust trauma,

and inside her desire to master English and an American cultural lifestyle on

an intimate level, Hoffman is full of questions wondering “in a splintered

society what does one assimilate to? ... [Is it] the very splintering itself[?]”

(197). Being Jewish and a post-war child she cannot separate her Polish stories

from her immigrant Canadian and American ones. Feeling marginalized,

displaced, she is haunted by feelings of residual nostalgia unable to

completely let go of her Polish past yet understanding that she cannot succeed

on American soil unless she finds some harmony in her evolving hybrid

feminine subjectivity. Her hybrid voice refuses colonization, thus she moves

towards a “distinctive shape and flavor” looking for ways to “adopt an attitude

of benevolent openness” without completely bending “toward another culture

… [and] falling over” (209). Hoffman’s desire to embrace English intimately

and protect aspects of her Polish identity illustrate how “differences [can be]

interesting and beautiful” (205). Navigating between Polish and American

waters (figuratively speaking), she never knows how she will remain inside

one culture or become stained by a new culture.

For Hoffman, negotiation between cultures and languages is an

intimate experience. “Both representation and communication depend on the

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individual self and the way we express ourselves” (Eriksson 7). She wonders:

“Is it as easy as adopting an attitude of benevolent openness to each other?”

(Hoffman 215). By expressing a growing desire to “enter into the very

textures, the motions and flavors of each other’s vastly different subjectivities

… [she thus demands] feats of sympathy and even imagination” (210). Such

interest illustrates Hoffman’s desire for Other cultures therefore it validates

her growing hybrid identity as one “comfortabl[e] anyplace … [however]

always … stuck in some betwixt and between place” (216). The value of such

spaces is in how they allow her to creatively connect her different cultural and

linguistic worlds. “Our identity, the person who we are is taken away from the

language and since identity is formed both from within ourselves and from the

outside by other people our identity ... [requires us] to [sometimes] use a

language that is not our own” (Eriksson 7). Her narrative shifts “along the axis

of bipolar ideas” between Polish and American spaces illustrating her

“decentered world” (Hoffman 211). Thus Hoffman’s hybrid identity surfaces

from, and shifts between, a re-telling of lived experiences in post-war Poland,

Canada, and in the United States.

Since her narrative includes the trauma narrative of her parents’

experiences, how she comes to terms with their trauma determines how she

experiences that trauma herself and how she then subsequently translate her

identity.. A younger Hoffman cannot immediately understand the trauma her

parents suffer. Cathy Caruth explains the often delayed route of understanding

with experiences of trauma. “The response to an unexpected or overwhelming

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violent event or events … are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later

in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena” (91).

Hoffman learns about and grasps the trauma her parents suffer in war-stricken

Poland during Hitler’s regime after they leave Poland. She carries their trauma

on her shoulders. She “can’t go as near” their pain” as she should but she can’t

“draw away from it either” (Hoffman 25). Hoffman’s mother speaks of their

trauma but she also hears about it from others. A chance meeting with an old

friend of her parents explains how “they [her parents] finally had to run for the

bunker” and how her mother “had had a miscarriage, [because she] was too

weak to walk through the snow … (and how her) father ended up carrying her

on his back, kilometer after kilometer” (25). Although originally unaware of

such details, they now bear heavily on Hoffman’s conscience becoming part of

“another image … to store, [yet] another sharp black bead added to the rest”

(25). However such information also allows Hoffman to understand her

parents’ behavior and their reactions. “My father comes home one day

reporting on a fistfight he got into when someone on the street said to him that

“the best thing Hitler did was to eliminate the Jews”…that classic

line…brought out whenever a Pole quickly wants to express a truly venomous

hatred” (32). Such wounds never completely heal, remaining

inflicted not upon the body but upon the mind…so trauma is not

locatable in the simple violent or original event in an individual’s past,

but rather in the way that its very unassimilated nature-the way it was

precisely not known in the first instance-returns to haunt the survivor

later on (Caruth 3-4).

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Susan Ingram refers to Hoffman’s story as a schizophrenic autobiography. I

understand this label Ingram assigns Hoffman’s narrative through Ingram’s

reference of “stark differences”, a movement between how Hoffman

remembers Poland versus how she comes to terms with her parents’ war

experiences (Ingram 261). Hoffman’s story moves beyond a story of cultural

adjustment, of learning a new language. Telling her story means Hoffman

must include her parents’ story of survival, to give voice to their trauma and

the ongoing secondary effects of their trauma as her own.

Her parents are some of the lucky ones, escaping the deportation,

torture and death that millions of other Jews (family members included)

suffered. This offers them little solace since nothing can erase the cumulative

memory of the experiences, loss and pain that lead to their escape. However

coming to North America allows them to acknowledge their trauma, deal with

their pain “between outward appearances and inner reality” more effectively

(261).

The subject of anti-Semitism now comes up frequently, but when my

parents-mostly my mother-speak of it, there is anger rather than shame

in their voices…anti-Semitism comes under the heading of barbarian

stupidity and that makes me feel immediately superior to it (Hoffman

32).

Their trauma narrative becomes part of Hoffman’s life story. It is, as she

describes,

the story of children who came from the war, and who couldn’t

make sufficient sense of the several worlds they grew up in, and

didn’t know by what lights to act… [they were] children too

overshadowed by [their] parents’ stories, and without enough

sympathy for [them]selves, for the serious dilemmas of [their]

own lives, and who thereby couldn’t live up to [or honor their]

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parents’ desire – amazing in its strength - [to] create new life

and to bestow on [them] a new world…[parents who did not

realize, could not possibly know] that in this new world too one

must learn all over again, each time from the beginning, the

trick of going on (230).

The preceding quotation eloquently illustrates the silent trauma children such

as Hoffman struggle with; children who can never fully comprehend their

parents’ suffering but nevertheless remain marked by it. Hoffman bears the

burden of moving forward, away from her past, away from her parents’ past.

As a result she moves into a present that can never be completely her own,

experiencing “a splitting or fragmentation of different self-representations that

remain integrated” (Ingram 261). Such movement between worlds is a greater

burden for her parents. Their story is, in Caruth words, “the narrative of a

belated experience, far from telling of an escape…rather attests to its endless

impact on a life” (Caruth 7). Hoffman’s parents are permanently scarred by the

events of their past, an “oscillation between a crisis of death…and the

correlative crisis of life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event

and the story of the unbearable nature of its survival” (7). They cannot empty

the contents of this baggage, or store them away indefinitely. They are to some

degree continually haunted by its contents. By telling their story, Hoffman

honors and gives meaning to their experience.

There is an interwoven connection between her parents’ trauma

narrative, Hoffman’s lived experiences, and her innate need to inhabit

language so intimately that it hugs her like a second skin. Hoffman’s greatest

sense of loss in Canada and the United States arises from her sense of

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“linguistic dispossession” as “sufficient motive for violence, for it is close to

the dispossession of one’s self” (Hoffman 124). There are parallels to be made

between this declaration and how trauma and its memory can manifest itself as

a dispossession of identity. In many ways Hoffman’s parents suffer from a

dispossession of their identity. Canada represents a new beginning for them, a

chance for rebirth. For Hoffman coming to Canada means leaving behind a

world she loves in Poland, entering “a perpetual search from home in

language” (Ingram 273). She experiences strong feelings of displacement in

Canada referring to this time as “the primal scream of my birth into the New

World…a mutative insight of a negative kind – and I know that I can never

lose the knowledge it brings me” (Hoffman 104). Inside her initial process of

adaptation, her integration is laden with negative forms of identification.

At school, name changes are part of an English initiation, a symbolic

cultural effacement. Ewa becomes Eva, and her sister Alina becomes Elaine.

“My sister and I hang our heads wordlessly under this careless

baptism….These new appellations…are not us…” (105).This act of naming, as

Elaine Chang observes, “has shifting contextual and historical determinants:

Who is using the terms, when, where, and for what purposes” locate women

differently (252). In Hoffman’s and her sister’s case, their Canadian re-naming

metaphorically strips down their Polish self. Hoffman states that these new

“names… make us strangers to ourselves” (105). Such examples of personal

effacement suggest that how one locates identity is dictated by what Spivak

calls “the uneven many-strandedness of “being” ” (qtd in Chang 253). This

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notion of “many-strandedness” is an important aspect of how (re)naming in

this story (unlike in Goto and Hong Kingston) is a link that weakens

Hoffman’s connection to her cultural origins. Naming is significant along

cultural and feminist discourses. Our names are often selected by parents or

other family members and sometimes they connect us to ancestors, other times

they may refer to mythological and literary figures (Hong Kingston and Goto

respectively). In Arab cultures names have meaning. For instance, my name

means desire and over the years I must admit I take great pride in this cultural

tidbit that translates me because I have come to understand the word desire as

one synonymous with life and bonheur. In First Nations cultures, names are

even more significant as Innu medicine man Marcel Grondin (who has given

many conferences to my students) explains (paraphrased): When a First

Nations baby is born, the weather and other signs will determine how the baby

is named and what role that baby will have in the community circle. From a

feminist point of view, naming evokes “concepts of identity, position and

location” (Chang 253). Taking on Western white names creates a kind of

“visual dis-order or double vision: a confusion between ... the white and

Western eye and the woman-seeing eye, [simultaneously inducing the] fear of

losing the centrality of the one even as we claim the other” (Adrienne Rich

qtd. in Chang 254). As a child, Hoffman reluctantly claims Eva over the Polish

Ewa. However as an adult when her family name changes from Wydra to

Hoffman in 1971 when she marries this name change seems to affect Hoffman

differently. Later when she divorces in 1976, she keeps her married name. I

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understand this choice she makes as an illustration of her desire to identify

herself as American over Polish and therefore as an acceptance of her growing

attachment to American spaces.

Moreover, because of the trauma her parents suffered as Jewish people

in Poland, renaming in Hoffman’s story is a particularly negative sign of

cultural effacement since it strips away a Polish marker of her identity. While

Hoffman’s parents struggle with the perceived stigma of being Jewish, she

struggles with the loss of her ties to her Polish and Jewish roots. However by

deciding to hold onto an American family name, Hoffman illustrates a latent

unease with her traumatic past. For her parents and for Hoffman, the trauma

experience transcends the lived experience. “Is the trauma the encounter with

death, or the ongoing experience of having survived it?” (Caruth 7). There is

of course no concrete way to separate the two. The pain that comes from how

the Hoffman family survives trauma is experienced through the narrative

process of recollection and retelling of events. It is also “an exercise in

imagining a past to fit the present” (Stern-Gillet 132). Past post-war

experiences haunt the Hoffman family in different degrees as feelings of

shame, rejection, or disapproval surface. Telling their story is also the result

“of a post-traumatic attempt to recover a lost self” (132).

Some of how Hoffman witnesses her parents’ ongoing experience of

trauma is felt through her father’s silence. She inadvertently bears aspects of

his silent burden as her own. “My father almost never mentions the war;

dignity for him is silence, sometimes too much silence” (Hoffman 23). She

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hears about some stories from her father, but “it is not until the events have

receded into the past…by that time so far removed that they seem like fables”

(23). Although Hoffman feels this burden her father shoulders, she also

admires his inner strength and his resolve to move forward.

Through the war, the death of his close ones, through the remaking of

his life in Poland, my father had never lost his basic, animal composure

which was made up of an unquestioned will to live and enough vitality

to know that the will, one way or another, would prevail (128).

Her father’s steel-will perception teaches Hoffman the importance of self-

reliance. In Poland, her father has learned what it means to “out-wit…the

System” and how “everyone…is involved in an illicit activity of some

kind…for the normal job wage is hardly enough to feed a family, never mind

to clothe them” (14). Hoffman bears witness to such hardships her parents

endured by speaking about them. These hardships may be understood as “the

enigma of the otherness of a human voice [that of her parents] that cries out

from the wound, a voice that witnesses a truth … [a suffering, Hoffman]

cannot fully know” (Caruth 3). Even as she narrates her parents’ silent

suffering Hoffman cannot alleviate the burden of such silence. She

understands the knowledge “that knowing and not knowing are entangled in

the language of trauma and in the stories [in this case, her parents’ own

stories]” (4). This understanding of her parents’ trauma is, at its core, the key

to a deeper understanding of Hoffman’s struggles and challenges in defining

her socially and culturally defined female voice.

In America she works hard to create a successful Americanized/Polish

identity for herself. She labels herself “a professional New York woman and a

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member of a postwar international new class…one of a new breed, born of the

jet age and the counterculture, and middle-class ambitions and American grit”

(Hoffman 170). Andrew Brown of The Guardian newspaper speaks of

Hoffman as someone who understands “that life must be constantly made

understandable, yet will never become familiar ... [and how] everyone is on

someone else's periphery”. Hoffman is at times perched on the periphery of her

mother’s Polish cultural codes. Hoffman’s more Americanized cultural views

differ from her mother’s Polish ones. She learns for instance that her mother

has a not-so-hidden respect for lazy women. Laziness shows a certain

luxuriance of character, the eroticism of valuing your pleasure….Such

egoism is at the heart of feminine power, which consists in the ability

to make others do things for you, to be pampered (15-16).

This philosophy is an illustration of Hoffman’s mother’s Polish feminine

subjectivity, another consequence of her wartime suffering. Hoffman is quite

different.

My mother will be amazed at how much energy I’m willing to expend

in order to feed my ambition. She can’t quite figure out-and who can

blame her – why I’m in such a rush, where I’m trying to get to (16).

Her mother’s vision is one “born of the War…with its gamble that since

everything is absurd, you might as well try to squeeze the juice out of every

moment” (16). Hoffman’s mother’s desire to live a lazy life is a consequence

of her traumatic experiences in Poland. Her mother’s views reinforce

Hoffman’s ongoing belief that financial wealth is a marker of a successful

immigrant story. It is also an ongoing focus in her life, an unconscious

manifestation of this mentality.

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Hoffman’s insecurities about her economic status first surface in

Canada. Seeing her parents struggle in Canada manifests itself as inadequacy,

a void, in Hoffman’s mind. She does not view her family’s arrival in Canada

as a guarantee of a better economic life. The reality of her parents’ financial

hardships in Canada becomes a negative reminder of class-based success,

something she does not experience in Poland. Hoffman’s first impressions of

life in Vancouver are scarred by her family’s experiences with the Rosenbergs,

a big name in the small community of established Polish Jews, “most of whom

came to Canada shortly after the war … made good in junk peddling and real

estate … but …. Mr. Rosenberg … had the combined chutzpah and good luck

to ride Vancouver’s real estate boom-and now he’s the richest of them all”

(103). Hoffman describes Mr. Rosenberg

not as…benefactor but as a Dickensian figure of personal tyranny….He

has made stinginess into principle…he demands money for our train

tickets…as soon as we arrive….I never forgive him…my father gives

him all the dollars he accumulated in Poland…we’ll have to scratch out

our living…from zero (103).

While Hoffman cannot control this economic reality, she acknowledges that

“the class-linked notion that I transfer from Poland is that belonging to a

“better” class of people is absolutely dependent on speaking a “better”

language” (123). For Hoffman, learning English, speaking it intimately,

becomes an important marker of immigrant success. It is how she claims a

connection to her new place.

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In spite of her parents’ suffering(s), Hoffman’s memories of living in

Poland as a child are positive ones. Her memories of her first love Marek are

inextricably linked to her attachment of her native country, Poland.

Insofar as we retain the capacity for attachment, the energy of desire

that draws us toward the world and makes us want to live within it,

we’re always returning…to…that first potent furnace, the

uncompromising, ignorant love, the original heat and hunger for the

forms of the world, for the here and now (Hoffman 75).

Living in Canada and then in the United States, Hoffman’s desire for Poland

does not fade easily. I understand this desire as Proustian nostalgia.

When from a long-distant past nothing subsists…after the things are

broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more

enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain

poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the

ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost

impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection

(Proust 53).

In a similar vein, Hoffman’s recollection of simple childhood attachments is

sensorial, nostalgic.

Why did that one, particular, willow tree arouse in me a sense of beauty

almost too acute for pleasure, why did I want to throw myself on the

grassy hill with an upwelling of joy that seemed overwhelming,

oceanic, absolute? (74)

She explains such longings as “the substance of ourselves – the molten force

we’re made of … not yet divided” (74). First in Canada and later in the United

States she comes to terms with the idea that such sensorial attachments will

never be as intimately connected to her as they were in Poland. Moreover a

departure from Poland had meant leaving behind her childhood sweetheart and

first love. Of all her past attachments, leaving behind her friend Marek is the

most painful loss. She must, as Mark Edmundsun points out, accept the fact

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that “in love, more than at any other time, we are dwelling in the past” (Freud

vii). Edmundson goes on to suggest that “to love, according to Freud, is to

‘over-estimate the erotic object’” (xiii). Applying this notion, Hoffman’s love

for Marek and for Poland exists primarily through a past feeling that cannot be

imitated or carried forward in a Canadian or American context. It is a

“contemporary moment that is historically untimely, forever belated” (Bhabha,

Location of Culture 56). Marek, like Poland, is symbolic of a past that

Hoffman cannot reclaim in a present context. It is only when Hoffman sees

Marek as an adult that she grasps this ideal of living in a moment that is as

Bhabha states, “forever belated” (56).

Of course, I would have wanted to marry my fantasy lover, but Marek

isn’t the figment of my imagination anymore. He has grown more

substantial, more mysterious, more himself. Really, I no longer know

who he is. He has escaped me….We moved…for those few days in

Boston, in refracted time, neither quite in the past nor fully in the

present…veiled by the haze of memories (Hoffman 229).

Later, news of Marek’s subsequent suicide illustrates the irreparable

consequences of war and its post-traumatic effects on “children who came

from the war, and who couldn’t make sense of the several worlds they grew up

in” (230). Marek’s suicide signals that he did not learn the “trick of going on”

(230). Hoffman confesses, “in my illusion of knowing him so well, I failed to

know him better” (230). Hoffman’s distance from Marek, physically and

emotionally means that she could not understand the depth of his pain, a pain

that results in suicide. Physical distance and different cultural realities

separated them, past closeness shadowed memories of what was once vibrantly

alive between them.

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Marek’s suicide signals his deep suffering, “an inexplicably persistent”

zone of conflict (Caruth 1). To avoid another kind of suffering, Hoffman must

accept her “nostalgia…[as] a historical emotion, [as] … a longing for that

shrinking space of experience” that no longer fits the new horizon of

expectations (Boym 10). In the same way that she could not possibly know

Marek intimately, after being separated from him for such a long time, her

knowledge of herself needs to be understood and recreated in a present context

of time and cultural space. Hoffman’s “nostalgia was not merely an expression

of [a Polish] local longing, but a result of a new understanding of time and

space that made the division into “local” and “universal” possible (Boym 11).

Hoffman must confront and accept a certain degree of alienation from her

Polish world before she can embrace and fall in love with English, and its

sociolinguistic codes. What she is resisting, in my opinion, is the idea of

transgressed pleasures, of loving outside Polish sociolinguistic values and

beliefs she holds so dearly. I understand this resistance as a resistance against

moving towards a new love.

Il y a deux affirmations de l’amour. Tout d’abord, lorsque l’amoureux

rencontre l’autre, il y a une affirmation immédiate…dévoré par le désir,

l’impulsion d’être heureux…j’affirme la première rencontre dans sa

différence, je veux son retour, non sa répétition. Je dis à l’autre (ancien

ou nouveau) : Recommençons (Barthes, Fragments d’un discours

amoureux 31).

In the preceding quotation, Barthes explains how in that first meeting between

two people, after an initial attraction for the other, two people will try to

recapture that initial moment of desire. However, each moment must be

embraced as time specific. Thus other feelings and other moments will overlap

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and reshape the initial connection. I understand Hoffman’s desire to embrace

and move between her Polish and American cultures as a Barthesian notion of

“desire for the Other” “doubled by … language which splits the difference

between Self and Other so that both positions are partial; neither is sufficient

onto itself” (72). When Hoffman finds herself engaging in a full-fledged and

intimate relationship with the English language, she begins to see linguistic

and cultural difference in more empowering terms.

Learning English as intimately as she knew Polish allows Hoffman to

connect on a deeper, more profound level with the reality of present socio-

linguistic American codes. Mastering English on an intimate level means she

is

back with the music of the language….Words become as they were in

childhood, beautiful things-except this is better, because they’re now

crosshatched with a complexity of meaning, with the sonorities of felt,

sensuous thought (Hoffman 186).

This musicality Hoffman speaks of is the sound of hybrid meaning. Hoffman’s

mastery of the English language holds the same sensual, passionate pleasure a

lover experiences when s/he uncovers his or her partner’s hidden points of

desire. Her choice to write in her diary in English signals her desire to embrace

her adopted language more intimately, to learn English from an insider’s

position. This is a strong marker of Hoffman’s desire for hybridized

identification. While she never loses her love of Polish, learning English

means she negotiates language through different linguistic codes thus

creatively adopting English inside her understanding of Polish codes.

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Speaking English and using it intimately is not without its challenges

especially when she cannot “empathize with her American friends” (Stern-

Gillet 136). Initially, her inability to speak English prevented her from

developing any positive attachments to Vancouver, and Canada. Mastering

English in the United States, first in Texas, later in Boston allows Hoffman to

create a more intimate attachment as a bicultural Americanized Polish woman,

or a Polish woman with an Americanized edge.

I receive the certificate of full Americanization….I am the sum of my

parts….Harvard has been accepting of me, the American education

system as hospitable and democratic as advertized. Respected men of

letters have taken my literary opinions seriously (Hoffman 226).

Hoffman trains herself linguistically in the same way an athlete trains for the

Olympics. She perfects her skills in English. Language is a “crucial

instrument” for her to “overcome the stigma of [her] marginality” (123). She

describes herself as someone “who wants to live within language and to be

held within the frame of culture” (194). Contrary to her desire to master

language within its cultural context, her American friends “want to break out

of the constraints of both language and culture” (194). As Hoffman points out,

insofar as I’m an outsider wishing to be taken in, I’ve come at the

wrong moment, for in the midst of all this swirling and fragmenting

movement, the very notion of outside and inside is…quaint….I can go

anywhere at all and be accepted there. The only joke is that there’s no

there [once] there (196).

The preceding quotation suggests that the American center is not so strong or

visible to Hoffman. As Eleanor Ty points out “subjectivity is not essential but

constantly reprocessing itself” (Ty 72). Her experiences in America teach her

that “instead of a central ethos, [she] has been given the blessings and the

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terrors of multiplicity” (164). For the hybrid individual, the challenge lies in

juggling these blessings and terrors. Hoffman must explore identity as “the

sum of her languages” and cultures (Stern-Gillet 138). Anthony Giddens

suggests that “the best way to analyze self-identity in the generality of

instances is by contrast with individuals whose sense of self is fractured or

disabled” (Giddens 53). In this regard, Hoffman negotiates her subjectivity, or

“selfhood as the core of one’s being, unique, continuous, and immediately

accessible to introspection” (Stern-Gillet137-138). Moving between different

cultural contexts, Hoffman deals with her “foreign environment[s]” by shifting

her “aspirations towards integration” (137). However Hoffman’s “perceived

marginality” surfaces through her nostalgic rumination of Poland (137).

Immigrants who do not wish to assimilate have no choice but to

negotiate their identity between cultures. Thus “the metaphor of fidelity to an

original is an especially suggestive one in the context of an immigrant’s life”

(Besemere 327). In this position, holding on to, living inside, one center is not

only difficult, it can be an alienating and painful process. However

uncomfortable it may be to travel between cultural codes, such an experience

can also be a rewarding one. Connectivity between cultures can be a privileged

space. Hoffman describes it as

an experiment that is relatively rare [because it means that

people] want to enter into the very textures, the motions and

flavors of each other’s vastly different subjectivities–and that

requires feats of sympathy and even imagination in excess of

either benign indifference or a remote respect (Hoffman 210).

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Hoffman privileges the idea of people entering each other’s subjectivity in

meaningful and profound ways. Entering another’s subjectivity with such

intimacy is also a fundamental aspect of how an individual narrates trauma

narrative and personal autobiography, or lived experience, as a profound,

meaning-making process. Her story is a “movement back and forth between

two possible selves, associated with two distinct cultural and linguistic life-

models” (Besemere 329). For Hoffman, it is important to “to rewrite the past

in order to understand it” (Hoffman 242). Acknowledging the different

linguistic, cultural and traumatic narrative passages she is confronted by allow

Hoffman to learn to negotiate connectivity between these different points.

Hoffman’s mastery of English gives her a stronger American voice.

She validates “the metaphor of voice … [as] important” and necessary in how

she assigns value “between language and the self” thus attaching importance to

her hybridized identification (Besemere 330). For Hoffman, “America is the

land of yearning, and perhaps nowhere else are one’s desires so wantonly

stimulated…under the constant assaults of plenitude, it is difficult to agree to

being just one person” (Hoffman 139). Living in America, Hoffman

understands that she must discard parts of her Polish skin; however, she cannot

crawl into a completely American costume either. Hoffman accepts this as

“the process of (fluid) Americanization” one that makes “assimilation an

almost outmoded idea” (195). Such a process takes her “ into a culture that

splinters, fragments, and re-forms itself as if it were a jigsaw puzzle dancing in

a quantum space” (164). Mary Besemere points to Hoffman’s “confident

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working American voice and her rarely exercised Polish one” as suggestive of

Hoffman’s identification process becoming more dominated by American

codes (Besemere 343). Hoffman is also confronted by “the question of

femininity” wondering how she is “to become a woman in an American

vein…gender is different here, and it unfolds around different typologies and

different themes” (Hoffman189). As Butler states “the script…is always

already determined…the subject has a limited number of “costumes” from

which to make a constrained choice of gender style” (Butler 56). When

Hoffman falls in love with an American, she falls “in love with otherness”

(Hoffman 186). Falling in love with, and marrying, an American mean “there

is an even stronger than usual impetus to understand and be understood” in

English and move within American cultural codes (Besemere 340). Hoffman’s

intimate relationship illustrates another way she embraces desire for

connectivity between cultures. However it does not come with a guarantee

(like any relationship). When she divorces, their separation becomes an

acknowledgment of “ineradicable separateness” because she faces the reality

that “they do not share a common language” (Hoffman 340). Hoffman makes

the following confession: “in the smallest, quietest phrases ... I know most

poignantly that we don’t speak exactly the same language” (190). This

confession suggests that love means loving the person and their world,

entering their cultural and linguistic codes intimately. Hoffman’s success in a

subsequent relationship may be attributed to her “deepening ... English-

language sense of self” (Besemere 341).

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Gloria Anzaldúa

Unlike Hoffman, Anzaldúa’s story is not about choices she makes to

juggle between cultures and languages. Rather it is a personal and politically

voiced narrative about embracing hybridized identification. The cultural

group occupies a dominant role in how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La

Frontera addresses issues of identity. In this autohistoria (a mixture of

autobiography and historical experience) Anzaldúa claims a multi-subjective

identity inside “psychological and spiritual borderlands” that frame her

“creative process” as Chicana (Câliz-Montoro 11). Like Goto and Hong

Kingston, Anzaldúa re-scripts her otherwise marginalized female voice as an

empowered one. Her autohistoria is, in my opinion, a more complex narrative

structure than Goto’s ‘process of re-telling personal myth…a departure from

historical ‘fact’ [her grandmother’s history] into the realms of contemporary

folk legend’ (Acknowledgements Goto). It is also different from Hong

Kingston’s conflation of mythological and real experience because Anzaldúa

embodies different mythological and real subjects in her narrative. She

questions herself as “a subject [who] occupies multiple spaces simultaneously”

(Câliz-Montoro 11). In addition, as an autobiography, Anzaldúa’s life story

also differs from Hoffman’s. It is more than a re-telling of childhood and adult

life experiences. Her autohistoria is, as Sonia Saldivar-Hull points out, a

“socio-politically specific elaboration of late twentieth-century feminist

Chicana epistemology” (Anzaldúa, Borderlands 1). Anzaldúa grows up in a

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cultural environment where “males make the rules and laws; women transmit

them … [where] the culture and the Church insist that women are subservient

to males” (38-39). Her story is therefore “riddled with uncertainties, paradoxes

and double even triple binds” (Câliz-Montoro 12). She rebels against fixed

models of thinking that refuse her access to such multiple binds. “Even as a

child I would not obey….Instead of ironing my younger brothers’ shirts or

cleaning the cupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, painting,

writing….Nothing in my culture approved of me” (Anzaldúa 38). As a lesbian,

and as a woman of color, Anzaldúa’s desire to formulate gender and

subjectivity on her terms is more combative, polemical than the other writers I

focus on in this chapter.

In essay two, Movimientos de rebeldia y las culturas que traicionan

Anzaldúa speaks about personal rebellion and betrayal. Angry, she reveals her

desire to deconstruct the dominant male ideology of her community. She

asserts her voice as an “Aztec female” illustrating how “her Chicana identity is

grounded in the Indian woman’s history of resistance” (43). “Chicana

borderland aesthetic is one which is in a constant state of transition” (Câliz-

Montoro 14). This transition mirrors Anzaldúa’s movement between codes.

Her desire to move between subjectivities reminds readers of how Anzaldúa

like other feminists are as women “skilled at stepping into spaces (forms)

created by the patriarchal superego and cleverly subverting them” (De

Lotbinière-Harwood 94). This act of subverting the patriarchal voice

dominates Anzaldúa’s narrative as a “writer, as a woman…as a woman of

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colour” and as a lesbian of colour (Minh-ha 28). In essay three entitled

Entering Into the Serpent Anzaldúa talks about pagan beliefs specific to

Mexican Catholics, grounding her faith in both physical and spiritual/psychic

realities. She rewrites herself by “tracing the mythic landscape which

originates in Aztec tradition” (Câliz-Montoro 13).Through a conflation of

spiritual references and factual personal realities she illustrates her desire to

elevate her feminine subjectivity towards a more spiritual realm. Moreover,

language becomes

l’équivalence de l’amour et de la guerre: dans les deux cas, il s’agit de

conquérir, de ravir, de capturer … l’amoureux – celui qui a été ravi –

est toujours implicitement féminisé (Barthes, Fragments d’un discours

amoureux 223).

The serpent represents occult spirituality, feminine subjectivity and sexuality.

It is

the symbol of the dark sexual drive, the chthonic (underworld), the

feminine, the serpentine movement of sexuality, of creativity, the basis

of all energy and life (Anzaldúa, Borderlands 57).

Throughout her autohistoria, Anzaldúa conflates historical and personal

experience with spiritual and sexual undertones. This is her strongest tool of

empowerment. By weaving personal story inside historical references, she

illustrates her desire to be understood collectively thus entwining her personal

revolution with that of the communal Chicano revolution. Spiritual references

empower her lesbian feminine sexuality. For instance, “the serpent’s mouth …

guarded by rows of dangerous teeth, a sort of vagina dentate ... [is] the most

sacred place on earth, a place of refuge, the creative womb from which all

things were born and to which all things returned” (56). In this way, the

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serpent’s mouth becomes a symbolic entry into the spiritual and creative

essence of Anzaldúa’s sexual and feminine subjectivity. Moreover, the serpent

goddess is a strong symbol against the hierarchy of the male-dominated

Azteca-Mexica. Even more compelling is the image of the “desexed

Guadalupe” the Mexican Virgin Mary in the role of “defender (or patron)” a

role “traditionally ... assigned to male gods” (51). By weaving the story of La

Virgen de Guadalupe and drawing upon the sexual symbolism of the serpent

into her story, Anzaldúa gives her Chicana lesbian voice a powerfully

hybridized identification of feminine subjectivity.

In the fourth essay La herencia de Coatlicue/The Coatlicue State, she

“enacts her multiple subjectivities” through “her “inner self, the sum total of

all [her]…reincarnations [and her lesbian desires as], the godwoman,” that

“pulsate” in her body and grow stronger (72). She refers to the Coatlicue state

as the “symbol of the underground aspects of the psyche” (68) stating that

knowledge and consciousness (perhaps a deeper awareness of her sexuality)

allow her “a travesia, a crossing,” a move forward (70). This notion of

‘travesia’ is an integral component of how Anzaldúa (re)writes herself. In her

essay, “A Not-So-New Spelling of My Name”, Elaine Chang explains that for

feminists such as Anzaldúa, “the partial perspective of the white Western

feminist is a kind of visual dis-order or double vision” (254). For Anzaldúa,

locating oneself as the product of “racial, ideological, cultural and biological

cross-pollination” engenders a kind of “hybrid perception [which is] anchored

in a hybrid subjective reality” (255). Anzaldúa views the borderlands,

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geographically and metaphorically, as a physical, psychological, sexual and

spiritual space. As she states, it exists “where two or more cultures edge each

other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under,

lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two

individuals shrinks with intimacy” (Anzaldúa 19). To shrink the space between

her multiple subjectivities, Anzaldúa writes to “hear about Herself … the

emergence of a writing self…to a consolidation of writing from the self”

(Minn-ha 28). Anzaldúa allows her writing self to surface from her innate

desire to free Herself and all her multiple subjectivities.

As I point out in Chapter Three, writing simultaneously in different

languages without translating everything into English is a powerful tool of

expression for Anzaldúa. “It has tongues which are split with Spanish and

English and sprinkled with Nahuatl” (Câliz-Montoro 12). She breaks down

paradigms and extract her narrating I and her ideological I from any fixed

“traditional frames…oppressive histories and myths that censor” her

difference(s) (Smith 154). Her multilingual discourse may be understood as a

symbolic assertion of her dualities and contradictions as a mestiza Chicana

lesbian feminist. This position is not a comfortable one. As Homi Bhabha

explains

the inscription of the minority subject somewhere between the too

visible and the not visible enough returns us to Eliot’s sense of cultural

difference and intercultural connection, as being beyond logical

demonstration. And it requires that the discriminated subject, even in

the process of its reconstruction, be located in a present moment that is

temporarily disjunctive and effectively ambivalent (“Culture’s In-

Between” (56).

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Anzaldúa’s multisubjectivity is a key element of reconstruction in how she

chooses to define herself. As she moves between the different linguistic voices

and cultural codes of her hybrid subjectivity, she illustrates her simultaneous

ambivalence and comfort in this movement between selves. Her narrative sits

inside a Bakhtinian discourse where “the collision between differing points of

view on the world…are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new

‘internal forms’ for perceiving the world in words” (Bakhtin qtd. in Bhabha

58). Anzaldúa explains that “The Aztecas del norte…compose the largest

single tribe or nation of Anishinabeg (Indians) found in the United States

today….[who]…call themselves Chicanos and see themselves as people whose

true homeland is Aztlan (the U.S. Southwest)” (Anzaldua 23). However, out of

shame, many Mexicans do not acknowledge their indigenous ancestry. The

following poem illustrates Anzaldúa’s multisubjective identity:

To live in the Borderlands means you

Are neither hispana india negra españolea

Ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed

Caught in the crossfire between camps

While carrying all five races on your back

Not knowing which side to turn to, run from,

To survive the Borderlands

You must live sin fronteras

Be a crossroads (Anzaldúa qtd. In Câliz-Montoro 14).

.

Thus her hybrid literary strategy, her “autobiographical manifesto” between

languages and cultural codes allows Anzaldua to transcribe her narrating I as a

“moi poétique”iii (Smith 155). It also permits her to employ language as a

metaphor of desire because she enters a “dialogical engagement with history

and fantasy” (154). By conflating her ideological I with a “moi poétique” she

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also conflates her role as writer and poet. Her description of the geographic

and political significance of the U.S.-Mexican border as an open wound: “es

una herida abierta,” where the “Third World grates against the first and

bleeds” confirms the importance she places on a poetic communication

(Anzaldúa 25).

In a more polemical example, she juxtaposes the arrogant tone of an

English poem inside a bitter commentary. This strategy allows her to challenge

the dominant message of white American superiority. In her essay entitled The

Homeland Aztlán/El otro México, the following poem asserts her point of

view.

The justice and benevolence of God

will forbid that…Texas should again

become a howling wilderness

trod only by savages, or…benighted

by the ignorance and superstition,

the anarchy and rapine of Mexican misrule.

The Anglo-American race are destined

to be forever the proprietors of

this land of promise and fulfillment.

Their laws will govern it,

their learning will enlighten it,

their enterprise will improve it.

Their flocks range its boundless pastures,

for them its fertile lands will yield…

luxuriant harvests…

The wilderness of Texas has been redeemed

by Anglo-American blood and enterprise (Wharton qtd. in

Anzaldúa 29).

Anzaldúa’s response to this poem written by William H. Wharton is a scathing

condemnation of “white superiority [and how they] seized complete political

power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still

rooted in it” (29). Inserting such poems into her autohistoria allows Anzaldúa

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to contest hegemony, what Sidonie Smith refers to as “the subjectivity of [the]

universal man,” someone who represents “authority, legitimacy, and

readability” (Smith and Watson155). Moreover, by including poems,

epigraphs, phrases and words in her autobiographical manifesto, in a mixture

of Spanish and English, Anzaldúa not only celebrates difference, she asserts

her hybrid subjectivities.

Anzaldúa’s writing goes further than Goto’s or Hong Kingston’s in the

ways she chooses to re-script her identity. In Borderlands/La Frontera, she

re-molds differences of language, race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation

to shape her mestiza (hybrid) identity. The anthology This Bridge Called My

Back, published in 1981, provides a time-specific framework for Anzaldúa’s

polemical discourse in her autohistoria (an autobiographical and historical

story account of her personal life). In the anthology, she identifies herself as a

Third World woman writer thus differentiating her position and female voice

from white feminist writers. She can only wield her power through writing and

by reclaiming all her tongues. It is this reclamation that is perhaps the

strongest marker of her hybrid identity.

In essay five entitled How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Anzaldúa claims

her multiple subjectivity through the eight languages she speaks: Standard

English, Working class and slang English, Standard Spanish, Standard

Mexican Spanish, and related dialects. However, she refers to this multiplicity

as “linguistic terrorism” because Chicanas view their language “as illegitimate,

a bastard language” criticizing how they “internalize [the way

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their]…language has been used against [them]…by the dominant culture” and

how they now use their language against each other (Anzaldúa 80). Playing

with language in this way, in all seven of her essays also illustrates Anzaldúa’s

desire and her longing to give her multiple subjectivities a powerful voice.

Moreover, as a lesbian of colour in the 80s, she views herself as “invisible

both in the white male mainstream (literary) world and in the white women’s

feminist world, though (she acknowledges that) in the latter this is gradually

changing” (Anzaldúa 165). Her refusal to translate the Spanish and Nahuatl

words, phrases, epigraphs and poems in this autohistoria asserts her mestiza

specificity. “The metaphor of crossroads … inconclusiveness … best reflects

[Anzaldúa’s] Chican[a] reality” (Câliz-Montoro 14-15). This need to evoke,

and openly experience her multiple subjectivities is obvious in the way

Anzaldúa views notions of territory, and nation.

Homi Bhabha suggests that the boundaries that separate one group of

people from another are “Janus-faced … both communal and authoritarian,

friendly and bellicose, all at the same time…the most vital thing about it is its

chameleon content” (Nation and Narration 45). In essay one, The Homeland,

Aztlan/El otro Mexico, Anzaldúa traces the historical and political events

which lead to the appropriation of Mexican land, the creation of borders

between Texas and Mexico that resulted in illegal crossings. By referring to

Texas as Aztlan, she voices her desire to reclaim this land as Mexican and

indigenous, simultaneously claiming hybrid specificity as a consequence of

such cultural crossing.

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Anzaldúa’s desire to reclaim her multiple subjectivities across borders

takes her beyond geographical and political lines into “discussions of

intersecting oppressions” (Martinez 544). She refers to the borderlands as a

physical, psychological, sexual and spiritual space. To shrink the space

between her multiple subjectivities, Anzaldúa interweaves Spanish into her

English narrative. This, as Smith and Watson point out

effectively traces the hybridity of her own identity in a way that

suggests how multiple and intersectional identities can be. The

very title both differentiates English from Spanish and joins

them at the border of the slash. The “I”/eye moves back and

forth across the border, just as Anzaldúa writes of navigating

the intersections of sexuality, ethnicity, gender, and nationality

at the constructed borderland of Texas and Mexico (37).

Anzaldúa cannot define herself through any one space of reference. She

understands that

(a)s a mestiza [she has] ... no country…yet all countries are … [hers]

because … [she is] … every woman’s sister or potential lover. As a

lesbian [she has] … no race, [her] ... own people disclaim … [her]; but

… [she is in essence] all races because there is a queer of … [her] in

all races. [She is] … cultureless because as a feminist, [she] …

challenge[s] the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of

Indo-Hispanics and Anglos; yet [she is] … cultured because [she is]

… participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to

explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with

images and symbols that connect us to each other and to the planet. Soy

un amasamiento, [she is] ... an act of kneading, of uniting and

joining…a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and

gives them new meanings (Anzaldúa 102-103).

I characterize Anzaldúa’s desire to embrace her subjectivity in such multiple

terms as her most powerful tool of resistance. “The blurring of boundaries ... in

her narrative of bloodlines and borders ... is an oppositional stance ... within

the hegemonic domain of power” (Martinez 546). By blurring boundaries, she

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asserts her othered identity as a lesbian/male/female, a mestiza Texan/Chicana,

and a Chicana feminist. She reveals her particular mestiza genealogy by

defining her sexuality as “being both male and female…the embodiment of the

hieros gamos: the coming together of opposite qualities within” (Anzaldúa

41). This example also reveals her desire to cloak her identity in fluid terms.

She contests any ideology that denies her right to be:

Catholic/divine/pagan/supernatural, sexual/homosexual,

Mexican/indigeneous/Texan, and male/female. I employ slashes between these

words to demonstrate how “multiple and intersectional” her identity is, both

joining and dividing her at these different borders (Smith and Watson 37). To

address her dualities and contradictions, she refers to herself as the Shadow-

Beast, the symbol of rebellion.

Moreover, focusing on her multiple subjectivities also allows Anzaldúa

to distinguish her feminist discourse from that of white feminists, another

representation of an unfulfilled longing to establish her own Chicana feminist

specificity. In her essay: “Beyond postmodern politics: Lyotard, Rorty,

Foucault,” Honi Fern Haber speaks of Foucault’s “view of the relationship

between language and power” rejecting his “view that the power of

phallocentric discourse is total” since “discourse is ambiguous and plurivocal,

it is [therefore also] a site of conflict and contestation. Thus, women, [like

Anzaldúa] can adopt and adapt [discourse]…to their own ends” (102). “Use of

her own personal biography to describe the injustices suffered by her family in

Texas and her use of poetry to convey a history of the Mexican people ... are

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forthright critiques of oppression” (Martinez 549). Anzaldúa “contests the old

inscriptions, the old histories, the old politics, the ancient regime…our social

reality…what Donna Haraway describes as our most important political

construction, a world-changing fiction” (Smith 157). Anzaldúa constructs her

own particular hybrid genealogy and feminist discourse that “interpolates

[her]…as native to the Americas and with a non-Western, multiple identity”

(Anzaldúa 2). She refuses to accept a feminist discourse derived from a

Western perspective, based on binary forms of representation.

They were white and a lot of them were dykes and very supportive. But

they were also blacked out and blinded out about our multiple

oppressions….They wanted to apply their notion of feminism across all

cultures….They never left their whiteness at home….However, they

wanted me to give up my Chicananess and become part of them; I was

asked to leave my race at the door” (231).

Thus, she creates a narrating I that allows her to “find [her] own intrinsic

nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on [her]” (38). She

explains that nothing “in [her] culture approved of” her so she must confront

the “rebel” within, her (38). In essay six, Tlilli, Tlapalli/The Path of the Red

and Black Ink, she focuses on her writing as her greatest desire, an “endless

cycle of making it worse, making it better, but always making meaning out of

the experience, whatever it may be” (95). She refers to her stories as

“acts…enacted” every time they are spoken aloud or read silently,” they

translate as “performances and not as inert and “dead” objects…the work

manifests the same needs as a person, it needs to be “fed,” la tengo que banar

y vestir” (89). In her final essay La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New

Consciousness, she concludes by expressing a desire for “a mestiza

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consciousness … [and asking for a] breaking down of paradigms [ones

dependent] …on the straddling of two or more cultures” (102). Anzaldua

wishes to converge binaries that divide her identity resonate in all her essays

and poems. She describes her existing hybrid in-between space as “awkward,

uncomfortable and frustrating…because… [she is] in the midst of [continual]

transformation” (Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera 237). This

transformation process is inevitably multi-faceted, full of contradictions and

connections. Drawing upon contradictions and connections to trace hybrid

subjectivities are of great value in how we can begin to understand and accept

difference(s) as creative spaces.

Conclusion

In the four works that are the focus of this chapter, it is clear that story-

telling plays a dominant role in how feminine subjectivity is negotiated and

(re)constructed. The “use of biography and fiction to convey injustices and

atrocities ... is evocative of a tradition among sociologists who used fictional

works to convey sociological meaning” (Martinez 550). The narrators in

question are “disconcertingly hybrid native[s ]…strangely familiar, and

different precisely in that unprocessed familiarity” (“Traveling Cultures”,

Clifford 97). Moreover, in the writings of Goto, Hong Kingston, and Anzaldúa

the issue of being women of colour has a significant impact in their methods of

resistance and their construction of feminine subjectivity. Their affirmation of

a hybrid feminine identity is a negotiation and a celebration of their

differences. Poetic and polemical, in varying degrees, their stories offer a

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substantive and validating point of view of hybridized identification and code-

switching between cultures and languages rather than simply presenting a

glossed over desire for exotic otherness.

Their meaning-making process and translation of feminine subjectivity

suggests that people who live between different cultures seek creative

connectivity as a hybrid push-and-pull between different feminine codes.

Addressing issues of identity and feminine subjectivity inside such a

framework, it becomes almost impossible to claim self-representation as a

construction of singular or even homogeneous cultural values. No matter how

hard they try to resist, such individuals inevitably find themselves drawn in by

different cultural, linguistic, and historical markers. They must cloak their

specificity in heterogeneous markers of culture, shifting between ambiguity,

concealment, and contradictory visions of Self and Other. Their in-between

passages and connectivity between cultures may be better understood as a

reframing of Freud’s vision of how “we regress [and advance] where and

when we can, and what we regress [and advance] to [as] the dream of perfect

authority and love” (Freud qtd. in Edmundson xi). If as Freud suggests we

spend our entire lives trying to fill the gaps “between desire and delivery” left

to us by our mothers and fathers, then I read the gaps between cultural

connectivity in similar terms (xi). Such parental notions of desire and deliver

should, in my opinion, extend beyond what is passed onto children by their

parents. If for instance, an individual’s sense of self and perhaps even self-

worth is determined, or strongly dictated, by voids left in unsatisfied parent-

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child relationships I would then suggest that the connection between

individuals and Other people and their cultural codes are important, even

complex, aspects of how such voids could be filled. Moreover, I would argue

that the desire to experience culture outside fixed codes leads to more creative

spaces of belonging and connectivity between people. Creativity is an art form

as much as it is a coping mechanism for what life throws at people. How

different cultural and linguistic codes come together in models of identity

construction are complex and challenging. However I would further argue that

the potential for creative reward justifies these zones of conflict and

connectivity. Any environment that encourages individuals to learn about and

to understand their differences in relation to Other differences has value. As

rose-colored as it may be, I believe that confronting and understanding zones

of conflict caused by differences will ultimately lead to connectivity between

people, their cultures and their different views of how life should be

experienced. If individuals can find pacific, harmonious, even lyrical ways to

define and accept difference then there is greater hope for a future of

hybridized communities. Literature, like all art forms, affords us this

opportunity to dream about such spaces of connectivity.

All the texts that are the subject of this chapter address hybridity as an

inevitable aspect of the immigrant female voice. Paterson explores this idea in

her analysis of Other and how it surfaces in Quebec literature. She explains

how

hybridité constitue à la fois la forme et le sens du texte. Comment en

effet dire l’exil, la fragmentation de l’être, la perte identitaire sinon par

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le biais de l’hybride….Au cœur de cette hybridité où se croisent tant de

textes et de discours, il y a encore un autre sens à dévoiler : celui d’une

écriture qui s’exhibe dans la productivité, sa matérialité et son

désir….Écrire alors dans l’espoir de se refaire une identité, de se

reconstituer comme sujet dans la société et l’Histoire; écrire pour se

souvenir et pour oublier en même temps; écrire…pour dire la parole

immigrante (Paterson 163-164).

The vision of the immigrant Other voice in Quebec literature that Paterson

advocates as a positive image may be applied to the writings of Goto, Hong

Kingston, Hoffman and Anzaldúa. Desire for Other is ultimately a validation

of how individuals wish to translate themselves. In the preceding quotation,

Paterson states that we write to remember and to forget. It is an act of giving

birth to something new by retelling the story in different forms and by

validating Others rather than marginalizing them. This is particularly true for

an immigrant who must negotiate a new voice alongside the voice of their

cultural origins. Such voices then are an affirmative representation of hybrid

identity and connectivity between cultures. They are transgressed, even

ambivalent spaces that illustrate the importance of reinvention if we wish to

creatively connect between cultures and tear down fixed or binary positions

that negatively other communities, cultures and individuals.

It is understood, even expected that there will always be some level of

marginality in any outsider position. It is a fragile zone of negotiation where

the ontological screen of reference becomes, in varying degrees, punctured,

multiple. However I understand this zone of negotiation between cultures and

languages as one of privilege. Readers can and should focus on the richness

they experience through an understanding and sharing of such relationships. I

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would equate this privilege as a sensorial discovery of Other worlds, Other

cultural and linguistic codes which allow us to (re)assign value in how we

translate identity. It is, in many ways, a seductive meaning-making process, a

kind of love-making, a dance between Self and Other, where the song and the

music is experienced through the written words. Thus the process of how we

translate experience is emphasized as much as the meaning of the experience.

Intensely passionate, the works of Hong Kingston, Hoffman, Anzaldúa, and

Goto project otherness and difference as a challenging, intimate process of

self-awareness and self-acceptance. These writers remind readers, at times

diabolically, of how we are different yet similar. Negotiating identity is a

process of continuous change, and redefinition, especially in how immigrant

feminine subjectivity is addressed inside North America’s growing diversity. I

view each difference, each change as something unique, and privileged.

Literature, like poetry, music and dance affords us an intimate and creative

vision of how we connect with each other. It is a personal sacred negotiation

between how words and worlds come together across barriers of difference(s).

To frame the idea of creative connectivity between cultures and/or languages I

promote in this thesis, the negotiation process is best understood within a

Barthesian sphere of friendship – une relation privilégiée.

Marquée par une différence sensible, rendue à l’état d’une sorte

d’inflexion affective absolument singulière, comme celle d’une

voix au grain incomparable ; et chose paradoxale, cette relation

[privilégiée] [sans]…aucun obstacle à la multiplier : rien que

des privilèges, en somme ; la sphère amicale était ainsi peuplée

de relations duelles (d’où une grande perte de temps : il fallait

voir les amis un à un : résistance au groupe, à la bande, au

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raout). Ce qui était cherché, c’était un pluriel sans égalité, sans

in-différence (Barthes 67).

In the preceding quotation, Barthes speaks of privileged connections between

friends. Similarly, the selected works in this chapter illustrate how individual

identity, in this instance feminine subjectivity, must be understood as a desire

for a hybrid negotiation of connectivity between selves, and between cultures.

Such an experience is best understood one experience at a time, outside the

pressures and boxed in definitions of collective models of identity. Such a

zone of privilege can, in my opinion, offer individuals a better understanding

of collective narrative identities. The relational aspect of hybrid identity

between groups should never be overlooked because individuals must find

connectivity inside groups. However such connectivity becomes more creative

when it is discovered and understood as une relation privilégiée, like the

sphere of friendship spoken of by Barthes, one relationship at a time.

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CHAPTER TWO

Performative narratives and Other desires of the socially and culturally

defined male immigrant voice.

To imagine that some little thing – food, sex,

power, fame – will make you happy is to deceive

yourself. Only something as vast and deep as

your real self can make you truly and lastingly

happy.

~ Nisargadatta

I continue my exploration of the hybrid self, a negotiation of passages

between dominant and minority representations, this time through the socially

and culturally defined male voice. In Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory

(1982), Dany Laferrière’s Comment faire l’amour avec un negre sans se

fatiguer (1985), and Antonio D’Alfonso’s Avril ou l’anti-passion (1990), the

hybrid self emerges in those instances where there is connectivity between

cultures. As in chapter one, this connectivity with Others is experienced and

explored as a Barthesian relation privilégiée. The selected works in this

chapter illustrate how an individual’s relationship with Others needs to be

understood as « un pluriel sans égalité » outside the pressure of group

dynamics. In this chapter, sexual space is an important focus because it

captures different images of how these writers read themselves and how they

wish to be read by others. Each writer’s vision of sexual space is a key factor

in understanding their particular (dis)connectivity between dominant and

Other cultures. Thus, there is an important link between sexual space and the

physical and cultural environment each protagonist occupies. This link is a

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critical backdrop for understanding how each writer conveys the male voice in

his works.

In the same way that a Barthesian relation privilégiée with Others

validates the importance of relationships as one-on-one encounters rather than

those formed inside group dynamics, I rely on Paul Ricœur’s idea of Oneself

as Another to illustrate a correlation between self-identification and multiple

subjectivities or hybrid identity under the same lens of intimate connectivity.

Within a Ricœurian discourse, this notion can be broken down in two ways:

- Les évènements mentaux et la conscience, en quelque sens qu’on

prenne ce terme, pourront seulement figurer parmi les prédicats

spéciaux attribués à la personne. Cette dissociation entre la

personne comme entité publique et la conscience comme entité

privée est de la plus grande importance.

- … une conscience n’est pas exclusivement exprimée par les

pronoms de la première et de la sécond personne du singulier …. Ils

sont attribués à quelqu’un qui peut être aussi une troisième

personne. (Ricœur, Soi-même comme un autre 47).

What Ricœur speaks of in the preceding points is the notion of selfhood as a

public and as a private entity. I focus on selfhood as a movement between

private and public spaces in this chapter. However a person can only

understand themselves, i.e. how they see themselves in the first person through

the presence and the vision of the second person. In his second point Ricœur

goes on to state that the first person may also be identified through a third

person. This premise of the subject ‘I’ being understood as a private entity in

the second and third person is quite pertinent to understanding the narrative

styles in the works of Rodriguez, Laferrière and D’Alfonso. I understand

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subjectivity in these works through Bhabha’s performative discourse, as a

reflective illustration between Self and Other.

In these works, this idea of recognizing oneself through the image of

the Other is ultimately a connective state between the subject I and his vision

of himself as seen through the second person and third person singular. In their

desire to reconcile culture, citizenship, and self-identity, Rodriguez, Laferrière

and D’Alfonso promote subjectivity as a hybrid concept in the third person,

created somewhere between the connectivity of the subject I and his counter

Other. Such relational connectivity is also negotiated inside group dynamics or

constraints therefore “there is no single concept of hybridity: it changes as it

repeats, but it also repeats as it changes” (Young 27). The emphasis is on the

impossibility of locating the self, one’s subjectivity, without reference to one’s

Other aspects, seen through Others. Moreover, the notion of selfhood is a

reminder that the fate of one individual is tied up in the fate of Others.

If one’s selfhood comes about through the coming together and

separation of oneself and Other then selfhood is also a construction of the third

person. I would then argue that the relational value of Self and Other is

therefore dependent on the third person, one that is more-or-less always in

movement. This movement is illustrated differently by the three writers I focus

on in this chapter. Laferrière toys with self-hood and connectivity between

Self and Other by interlacing his public and private spaces in a black and

white sexual frame. D’Alfonso addresses selfhood as a movement, a process of

creation between different public and private cultural spaces. Rodriguez

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illustrates a more analytical expression of self-hood focused on his public

spaces. In these spaces, he becomes a third person translation, a distanced I

alienated from his private cultural and sexual identities. I therefore position his

subject I inside shifting public American spaces.

Ricœur’s ideas of narrative emplotment or “the kingdom of the as if”

that I understand as unfulfilled longings for hybrid relationships help us

distinguish between Rodriguez and the other two writers. In Rodriguez’s

“kingdom of the as if” desire for citizenship in white American terms prevents

him from embracing his Mexican culture wholeheartedly. Consequently there

is a brick wall between his selfhood and his corresponding images of Other

selves. This means that Rodriguez, at least in this period of his life, remains

trapped inside a more-or-less Americanized public vision of self-hood. Unlike

Ricœur’s model, his third person entity cannot freely dialogue or identify with

his first person self. So rather than forming a connective state between these

entities, Rodriguez’s sense of self-hood is barricaded inside a static and

isolated lens. Unfortunately the version of American citizenship offered to him

does not correspond to his vision of American privilege. Moreover he finds

himself forced to straddle aspects of a Mexican cultural self (through

Affirmative Action programs for instance) he has not chosen for himself.

Unlike D’Alfonso and Laferrière who tease readers by playfully straddling

different cultural codes, Rodriguez’s narrative translates such movement

between cultures as zones of conflict. His narrative voice remains fixed inside

zones of pedagogy unable to move into spaces of the performative.

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Contrarily, Laferrière’s writing plays with cultural codes. He provokes

a Ricœurian understanding of the “kingdom of the as if” by collapsing and

subsequently reinventing stereotypes of black and white relationships. In his

narrative, self-hood is an invention of how Self as Other playfully creates

connectivity. Shifting playfully between Bhabha’s notion of pedagogy and the

performative, Laferrière blurs binaries between stereotypes. In another vein,

D’Alfonso’s protagonist Fabrizio “organize[s]...life retrospectively,” re-

creating his lived experiences on his own cultural terms, ones clearly hybrid in

nature (Ricœur 162). Laferrière and D’Alfonso illustrate a desire for « la

traversée vers l’autre…le retour vers soi…le vœu d’établir une nouvelle

relation, à travers la rencontre » with Others, ultimately a performative space

(Simon 65). Laferrière explores such desire through sexual experiences

between his black protagonist and college-aged white women. He assigns each

woman in his story with the prefix Miz thereby toying with stereotypes and

how he assigns them to white women. This assignment reverses power

dynamics since the black protagonist names the players and decides how their

personalities will be translated. In D’Alfonso’s work, a nouvelle relation

between Québécois and immigrant populations may be viewed as a needed

convergence of cultural, sexual and romantic differences. In both works, the

hybrid self emerges as an unfulfilled longing for connectivity with Others

witnessed through geographic, political, sexual and cultural tensions and/or

creative connectivities.

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Rodriguez cannot embrace his self-hood as a construction of

connectivity between cultural or sexual spaces. First, becoming an American

culturally and linguistically means he cannot embrace his Other status as

Mexican. Moreover because he does not speak of his homosexuality in Hunger

of Memory the parts he suppresses prevent readers from engaging with his

particular construction of selfhood intimately. In this work, the absence of

Rodriguez’s personal experiences with Others interfere with a more complete

understanding of his life. “I wanted something – I couldn’t say exactly what. I

told myself that [what] I wanted [was] a more passionate life … [one that

was] less thoughtless … less alone” (71). I read the loneliness Rodriguez

speaks of as a marker of his low self-esteem brought upon by his cultural loss

and his closeted state. In his later works, he speaks openly of his

homosexuality and why he could not come out in this first publication of his

life story. The absence of more intimate details about Rodriguez suggests that

his self-hood is negatively affected by his negotiation of identity. His frame, a

Ricœurian soi-même comme un autre model of identity has negative

consequences. He can only re-frame himself as a multiple subject once he

embraces those parts of his identity that focus on his differences: his Mexican

culture and his homosexuality.

The passionate life Rodriguez seeks, Laferrière’s protagonist Vieux

lives, albeit in a performative context. He celebrates being black through a

satirical representation of his sexuality. Vieux’s life consists of writing,

reading, eating, and having sex. He does not explicitly express the same

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concerns as Rodriguez about citizenship and its perceived advantages. He

focuses instead on life’s simple pleasures, letting them satiate his basic needs.

Laferrière parodies the sexual prowess of the black man to mockingly confront

« le mythe du Nègre animal, primitif, barbare, qui ne pense qu’à baiser, être

sûr que tout ça EST vrai ou faux » (Laferrière 48-49). Such statements may be

read as messages of contestation against the stereotyping or marginalization of

black men. As Homi Bhabha points out, “the strategy of colonial desire is to

stage the drama of identity…at the edge, in-between the black body and the

white body, [where] there is a tension of meaning and being, or some would

say demand and desire” (The Location of Culture 89). Laferrière’s conflation

of fantasy and the real play on the ideas of “demand and desire” Bhabha

speaks of. He seeks an original representation of selfhood, outside pre-

determined dynamics of racial power, one that allows him to openly and

intimately engage with Others.

D’Alfonso’s focus on sexual relationships also fits a Ricœurian vision

of self-hood. Through the negotiation of passages between different cultural

and linguistic lines, his narrative favors an interaction between cultures.

Fabrizio’s first romantic encounter is with Léah, a young Hungarian girl. She

becomes an important symbol of how Fabrizio claims his desire for Other

spaces. Her attraction to Fabrizio illustrates her wish to engage with someone

outside her culture. « J’ai tellement envie de poser mes lèvres hongroises sur

celles d’un Italien» (D’Alfonso, Avril ou l’anti-passion 74). At 16, the

protagonist Fabrizio begins his encounter with the Other through what he

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refers to as « une longue série de rencontre-promenades » (74), meetings that

teach him about the complications and pleasures of loving someone « qui peut

aimer sans frontières, sans loi, sans raison » (82). I read sexual exchanges in

Laferrière’s and D’Alfonso’s works as a conflation of sex and language(s) and

sex and culture(s). I interpret this focus on sexual relationships between

different races and cultures as a symbolic consumption of Other cultures, and

as an affirmation of Ricœurian self-love therefore a proclamation of love for

another. In his work(s), Rodriguez does not openly speak of sexual

relationships. Unable to openly embrace his homosexuality, low self-esteem

and loneliness punctuate Rodriguez’s narrative.iv In contrast the symbolic

function of sexuality (absent in Rodriguez’s writing) I speak of in the works of

Laferrière and D’Alfonso provide a framework for understanding hybrid

subjectivity as a validating construction of an individual’s negotiation of

passages between cultural markers.

Rodriguez’s story is situated in Sacramento, California in the 1960s

and the 1970s. Laferrière’s story takes place in the 1980s in Montréal. Like

Rodriguez, D’Alfonso’s protagonist grows up in the 1960s and 1970s, but in

Montréal. Inside these geographic spaces and time specific narratives, the

three works illustrate negotiations between dominant and minority cultures

differently. Laferrière and D’Alfonso embrace their cultures of origin, their

sexuality, and their love of others openly. Their desire to engage in an intimate

relationship with Other cultural spaces is illustrated through their construction

of personal relationships and the level of intimacy and sexuality projected

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inside those relationships. How they negotiate identity is time specific and it

is a key factor in how each writer assumes his socially and culturally defined

masculine voice. For Laferrière and D’Alfonso, it is apparent that intimacy

with Others is a vital aspect of selfhood. They negotiate their subjectivity one

relationship at a time as a Barthesian relation privilégiée.

However all three writers fragment and perform the voices of the Other

citizen, the one who speaks from the peripheral margins of a dominant centre

as a movement between inner and outer selves. In Finding Your Own North

Star, Martha Beck refers to the essential self as “the basic you, stripped of

options and special features…the essence of your personality” while the social

self develops “in response to pressures from the people around you” (11-12).

My usage of essential is limited to Beck’s definition of the word and it should

not be conflated or confused with any reductionist theories of essentialism.

Beck characterizes the behavioural patterns of the essential self as “attraction-

based, unique, inventive, surprising, spontaneous [and] playful” and the social

self as “avoidance-based, conforming, imitative, predictable, planned [and]

hardworking” (13).

By rejecting and silencing characteristics that point to his Mexican

ethnicity, Rodriguez’s essential self remains hidden from readers. On the other

hand, Laferrière’s use of satire, i.e. the sexual relationships between his black

protagonist and white women, is an illustration of Beck’s essential self. His

playful humour and satirical style illustrate his inventive side and how his

writing is performative in the ways it mocks and contests stereotypical

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representations of identity in the black/white binary. Laferrière moves between

aspects of Beck’s essential and social selves each time he plays with this

black/white binary. D’Alfonso’s protagonist Fabrizio lives the role of a hybrid

citizen as an Italian living between the French and English cultures. He

illustrates the impossibility of living outside a hybrid perspective. His narrative

suggests that he combines (rather than moves between) Beck’s version of the

social and essential self. Having to continually negotiate between two

dominant linguistic and cultural climates, Fabrizio’s journey towards hybrid

subjectivity is more or less a foregone conclusion. However such a hybrid

position is easier to negotiate for Fabrizio because he is a white Other

traveling between two dominant white cultures. For Rodriguez and Laferrière,

racial differences mean that negotiating connectivity between cultures is more

complex and challenging. They must deconstruct their subjectivity while

unconsciously eschewing the label of the exotic, visibly different Other. In her

essay, “Nostalgic Narratives and the Otherness Industry,” Mridula Nath

Chakraborty explains this paradox of the Other: “In pluralistic democracies

[the Other] becomes fetishised and multiply produced as an object of desire,

while at the same time being socially articulated/discriminated against through

the politics of difference” (127-128). While there is a sense of self-acceptance,

pride and love of culture(s) and language(s) present in the works of D’Alfonso

and Laferrière, it is hidden or absent in Rodriguez’s writing. His exploration of

selfhood is an illustration of class-based and colour-based choices one could

say a street-smart pedagogy. Through distinct narrative strategies, each

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writer’s work illustrates an encounter with the Other through ties to family,

sexuality, cultural and other community codes.

Dany Laferrière

In Dany Laferrière’s novel, Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans

se fatiguer published in 1985, the protagonist, Vieux recounts his experiences

in Montreal as he writes his novel Paradis du dragueur nègre. At the end of

his work, Laferrière provides a chronology of his personal life from 1953 to

2002. This permits readers to vet the links between Vieux’s experiences and

Laferrière’s personal ones. I will illustrate how the symbolism behind these

relationships may help us understand Vieux’s engagement with Others as a

Barthesian relation privilégiée. Even though the following list of chapter titles

is extensively long, I include it here to illustrate and accentuate Laferrière’s

humorous tone:

Le Nègre narcisse/la roué du temps occidental

Belzébuth, le dieu des Mouches, habite l’étage au-dessus

Le Nègre est du règne végétal

Le cannibalisme à visage humain

Quand la planète sautera, l’explosion nous surprendra dans une

discussion métaphysique sur l’origine du désir

Faut-il lui dire qu’une bauge n’est pas un boudoir?

Et voilà Miz Littérature qui me fait une de ces pipes

Miz Après-Midi sur une radieuse bicyclette

Une Remington 22 qui a appartenu à Chester Himes

La drague immobile/Miz Suicide sur le divan

Un bouquet de lilas ruisselant de pluie/Comme une fleur au bout de ma

pine nègre

Nous voici Nègres métropolitains

Une jeune écrivain noir de Montréal vient d’envoyer James Baldwin se

rhabiller

Rhyme électronique pour Miz Orange mécanique sur fond de conga

nègre

Une chronique de ma chambre au 3670 rue Saint-Denis

Miz Snob sur un air d’India Song

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Miz Mystic revient du Tibet

Le poète nègre rêve d’enculer un bon vieux stal sur la perspective

Nevsky

Le pénis nègre et la démoralisation de l’Occident

Le chat nègre à neuf queues/L’Occident ne s’intéresse plus au sexe,

c’est pourquoi il essaie de l’avilir

Le premier Nègre végétarien/Ma vieille Remington s’envoie en l’air en

sifflotant ‘y’a bon banania’

Les Nègres ont soif

On ne naît pas Nègre, on le devient.

Laferrière’s playful side surfaces through his choice of subtitles that parody

the image of le Nègre while poking fun at white feminism. These subtitles are

substantive enough to tell an entire story. I would like to point to the first (le

Nègre narcisse) and last (On ne naît pas Nègre, on le devient) chapter

headings as key ingredients in my interpretation of Laferrière’s writing.

Through parody his protagonist, the black dragueur Vieux, offers readers a

symbolic understanding of his various sexual relationships with white women.

His play with white feminism surfaces through such heading as Et voila Miz

Littérature qui me fait une de ces pipes. Such subtitles illustrate the

performative aspects of Laferrière’s narrative and aspects of his essential

inventive self. At the end of this work, he also includes an extensive reference

of the works he consulted to write this story. This list offers readers insight

into the inspiration behind his writing.

Vieux taps into his essential self by reading such writers as

Hemingway, Proust and Dante, having sex and drinking wine (21). Such

artistic forms of hedonism sustain Vieux’s core creative process, his nègre

narcisse, as he writes his novel Paradis d’un drageur nègre. The story takes

place in Montréal in the 1980s. Vieux shares a very tiny apartment above a

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topless bar (another marker of sexuality) with Bouba who lives on the couch.

Vieux’s bed is his life stage where « [i]l boit, lit, mange, médite et baise »

(Laferrière, Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer 12). Their

living conditions suggest they are poor. Unlike Rodriguez’s story, class-based

issues are not an explicit focus in Laferrière’s work. However they satirically

surface in those moments when Vieux engages in sexual activity with young

white women from Westmount, a wealthy English neighborhood in Montreal.

Bouba can play his music at three o’clock in the morning where even with

« des murs aussi minces que du papier fin » nobody complains (11). It is

another example of their impoverished but free lifestyle. Jazz (another

symbolic marker of their improvised and impoverished life as Black men)

music filters through their apartment day and night, an artistic backdrop for a

rather hedonistic lifestyle. Vieux describes their lifestyle as « une ambiance

assez baroque…le DÉJEUNER DES PRIMITIFS » (35). In Chapter One, Le

Nègre narcisse, Vieux refers to the social climate in Montréal as difficult :

« Ça va terriblement mal ces temps-ci pour un dragueur consciencieux et

professionnel… une pierre noire dans l’histoire de la Civilisation Nègre » (17).

In the French Larousse, the word draguer means: « aborder quelqu’un en vue

d’une aventure amoureuse ». In the Oxford dictionary, the English equivalent

is ‘flirt’ meaning “to behave towards someone as if one finds them physically

attractive but without any serious intention of having a relationship.” In both

definitions, it is understood that a sexual relationship does not equal an

emotional one.

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A polemical discourse underlies Vieux’s escapades as a black

dragueur. His sexual conquests may be read as a conquest of Other spaces. It

is in the ambivalence of his message(s) that his negotiation as hybrid citizen

and his desire for creative connectivity between cultures surfaces. He

effectively blurs white and black stereotypes through his parody of sexual

intimacy. I perceive Vieux’s sexual relationships with different white women

as a symbolic invasion of the occidental white man’s geographic and personal

territories. In Vieux’s words : « C’EST SIMPLE : JE VEUX L’AMERIQUE.

Pas moins. Avec toutes les girls de Radio City, ses buildings, ses voitures son

énorme gaspillage et même sa bureaucratie » (31). Vieux’s desire to possess

l’Amérique mirrors Laferrière’s refusal to attach his ontogenetic self (to

borrow the term from John Eakin), his sense of belonging and nation to one

particular place:

Je suis vraiment fatigué de tous ces concepts (métissage, antillanité,

créolité, francophonie) qui ne font qu’éloigner l’écrivain de sa fonction

première, faire surgir au bout de ses doigts, par la magie de l’écriture,

la fleur de l’émotion (Je suis fatigué 115).

Laferrière’s attachment to different spaces/places means that he does not like

labels that force him to choose. Moreover his desire to be inventive and

creative as a writer (qualities of Beck’s essential self) takes precedence over

cultural origins. His narrative style such as his chapter headings along with his

protagonist Vieux’s sexual encounters with different women is an illustration

of the multiplicity of spaces he wishes to occupy and ultimately how he plays

with stereotypes thus reversing the power dynamic in the black/white binary.

This desire to move between literary and sexual spaces fits well with Beck’s

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model of the essential self as attraction-based and the idea of creative

connectivity explored in this thesis.

Through Vieux’s sexual encounters with affluent, young, white women

Laferrière simultaneously mocks the role of the black dragueur and white

women, feeding and collapsing different stereotypes. Vieux’s most intimate

relationship with Miz Littérature validates and combines his love of literature

and sex. Such intimate connections with oneself (writing and reading) may be

understood as an aspect of Bhabha’s pedagogy and his sexual adventures with

white Others as performative. Both aspects translate the notion of a Barthesian

relation privilégiée. The intimate manner in which Miz Littérature connects

with Vieux may be read as an act of complete surrender. During the throes of

passion, she yells out «BAISE-MOI» followed by « TU ES MON

HOMME…TU ES LA PREMIÈRE PERSONNE À QUI JE DIS ÇA…JE

VEUX ÊTRE À TOI » (Laferrière, Comment faire l’amour 50-51). I read

Vieux’s intimate relationship with someone named Miz Littérature in three

ways. First, her desire to feel such closeness with Vieux is symbolic of the

intimacy possible between a black man and white woman. Sexual exchanges

are also the impetus for creative writing. In his most recent work, Je suis

fatigué, Laferrière explains that he writes « généralement à l’aube, juste après

avoir fait l’amour » (50). In Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se

fatiguer, Vieux also writes after sex. Lastly, this relationship can be read as an

allegory of Laferrière’s romance with literature since he sometimes reads and

shares sexual intimacy simultaneously. Moreover all of Vieux’s sexual

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encounters are with educated white women. The following declaration

illustrates his desire to collapse other stereotypes. « Un Nègre qui lit, c’est le

triomphe de la civilisation judéo-chrétienne ! La preuve que les sanglantes

croisades ont eu, finalement, un sens. C’est vrai, l’Occident a pillé l’Afrique,

mais ce NÈGRE EST EN TRAIN DE LIRE » (42). Once again, Laferrière’s

tone is humorous but laden in sarcasm towards those who continue to

negatively marginalize black people. In such instances, Laferrière’s narrative

style illustrates his movement between Beck’s model of an essential and social

self as he sarcastically validates the black man who reads, an inventive

approach in how he addresses prejudices.

Bouba is not only Vieux’s roommate but his alter-ego. He is also a

model of Beck’s essential self, however a more simple one than Vieux. He

drinks copious quantities of tea, eats, sleeps, listens to Jazz artists such as

Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and cites passages from the Qur’an. He seems

content doing nothing and going nowhere. Music, prayer and occasional

counseling sessions with young women complete his daily routine. He has no

real vocation and he appears unaffected by the outside world, except in his role

as counsellor or mentor to white women in need. I view Bouba as Vieux’s

muse of spirituality. In fact when Bouba begins counselling Miz Suicide,

Vieux does not understand. He describes her as « cette horreur aussi sexy

qu’un poux » (70). Bouba responds: « La charité Vieux, tu ne connais pas ça »

(71). There is indeed an ironic overtone as well as a latent sarcasm in this

response with the idea that charity is offered by a black man to a white

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woman! This collapse and reversal of black/white roles is performative in

narrative style.

The first of ten instalments in Laferrière’s Autobiographie américaine,

Laferrière experiments with the notion of creative freedom. He refers to the

conflation of fact and fiction in life and in literature as «la liberté totale» (Je

suis fatigué 87). He views « le Nègre » as « une invention purement nord-

américaine » and parodies this image in his work (Je vis comme j’écris 91). In

this vein, he blurs the borders between his creative spirit and his personal

interests. For instance, his references to great jazz artists and his numerous

quotations from the Qur’an are not an illustration of his love of jazz or his faith

in Islam. As he explains,

je me suis acheté un petit livre sur le jazz, un truc sommaire…j’ai fait

la même chose avec le Coran. J’ai acheté un bouquin de règles

coraniques et je m’en suis servi. Je m’en fous du contenu. C’est le

rythme qui m’intéresse…quand les gens essaient de retrouver ma vie à

chaque coin de page, ça me fait rigoler (J’écris comme je vis 101).

The title of his work J’écris comme je vis contradicts Laferrière’s preceding

words. The ambivalence in his writing is part of his creative writing strategy. I

understand this ambivalence, Laferrière’s « rythme » as his desire to create a

kind of New Age music. This idea of jazz music as a tool to inspire, relax and

even instill optimism in its listeners also has symbolic value because the

improvisational aspects of jazz are like Vieux. The varied personalities of his

lovers, for instance, illustrate Vieux’s ability to improvise with each one in

much the same ways instruments communicate between each other. Each

encounter he has I understand as a solo, improvised and original in how Vieux

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communicates with these women, creatively and with a certain musicality. His

choice of white women allows him to toy with patterns of intellectual

bourgeoisie and playfully, almost sardonically, question identity construction

by moving between Beck’s model of the social self as imitative, planned and

the essential self as inventive. As Laferrière states in Je suis fatigué, « il faut

jeter les idées et les émotions sur la page blanche, comme des légumes dans un

chaudron d’eau bouillante. Mais d’abord et surtout, on doit commencer à

écrire quand on ne sait pas quoi dire » (65). His desire to write is « tout

simplement…quelque chose surgissant de [s]on intimité la plus profonde »

(75). It is not his intention to « faire la sociologie urbaine» or to respond to

such questions as: «Comment un jeune Haitien nous voyait-il? » (75). He

writes to « jeter la pleine lumière sur » lui et « [d]e descendre dans les

ténèbres de [s]a pauvre âme » (75). While this may be true, Laferrière’s style

of parody and his treatment of black and white stereotypes suggest that he taps

into Beck’s model of the essential and social self by toying with socially

accepted ideas. He also reveals his extended consciousness as he redefines

such stereotypes. Antonio Damasio defines the extended consciousness

as going beyond the here and now of core consciousness. The here and

now is still there, but it is flanked by the past, as much past as you may

need to illuminate the now effectively, and, just as importantly, it is

flanked by the anticipated future” (195).

Laferrière’s satirical tone illustrates his implicit resistance to racial divisions as

well as his desire to collapse fixed forms of subjectivity. In this way, his vision

of self-hood is in continual movement between black and white binaries of

self-hood. This brings to mind Harris’s observation that

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all patterns [of self-representation] are partial and as they break, the

image changes. It appears to be the same image…two forces which

resemble each other but are not the same. Thus one begins to open

oneself up to new undreamt-of dimensions and regenerative

possibilities” (Harris qtd. in Nasta 39).

For instance, Laferrière refers to Vieux and Bouba as occidental men who

share an Islamic faith. George Elliot Clarke points out that the Qur’an

“highlights [Laferrière’s] dissident vision of the Caucasian Occident (marked

by the sign America) as a citadel of “evil-doers” and “infidels” (6). Laferrière

also plays with the notion of white superiority within the master/slave context.

« Se faire servir par une Anglaise (Allah est grand). Je suis comblé. Le monde

s’ouvre, enfin, à mes vœux » (Laferrière, Comment faire l’amour avec un

nègre sans se fatiguer 29). Moreover, through his interpretation of « le Nègre

» he paints an image of these black men that is stereotypical in some ways and

completely inventive in other ways. Such references illustrate his satirical

contestation of black marginality.

In Jana Evans Braziel’s words, Laferrière’s “Haitianiz[ing] of white

North America” shows his vision of identity and place to be consistent with

my idea of hybrid identity (874). It is a continual negotiation of passages

between culture(s) and place(s):

La vie est un acte collectif. Et si vous ne vivez pas dans le pays que

vous habitez, ce que vous risquer c’est de tomber, très vite, dans

l’univers de la fiction. De devenir en quelque sorte un être fictif

(Laferrière, Je suis fatigué 102).

Laferrière detests labels that box him into a fixed category. He simply wants to

be « un homme du Nouveau Monde » (115). However in the selected work I

focus on his protagonist plays inside the French English language debate as a

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French-speaking black man who engages in sexual relationships with white

women. He chooses « une position mitoyenne » as American (115). « En

acceptant d’être du continent américain, je me sens partout chez moi dans cette

partie du monde » (Je suis fatigué 115). Since he speaks and writes in French,

Laferrière negotiates subjectivity through his encounter with white

Anglophone women. Moreover his desire to collapse black and white

stereotypes illustrates, albeit through parody, his need for connectivity

between cultures, color lines and male/female dynamics. Having lived in Port-

au-Prince, Montréal and Miami, Laferrière also understands the complexities

of labeling himself as simply Haitian. His nostalgic reflections of life in these

cities illustrate a genuine connection to place:

Port-au-Prince, c’est le désir tourmenté qu’on trouve dans les paysages

insolites et mystiques…Montréal m’a toujours fait penser à une jeune

fille fraîche, directe et bien dégourdie. Montréal est devenu mon choix

d’homme. Et Miami, mon lieu d’écriture…Port-au-Prince occupe mon

cœur, Montréal ma tête, Miami mon corps…je ne quitte jamais une

ville où j’ai vécu. Au moment où je mets les pieds dans une ville, je

l’habite. Quand je pars, elle m’habite (Je suis fatigué 193).

The preceding quotation is taken from the last of his ten autobiographical

works Je suis fatigué published in 2001. It provides an interesting commentary

on Laferrière’s satirical explorations of Vieux’s sexual relationships with

young women in Westmount, Montréal in Comment faire l’amour avec un

négre sans se fatiguer. I read this first instalment of his autobiographical

collection as Laferrière’s own drague with Montréal. On the one hand,

Vieux’s sexual experiences with attractive white women in Montréal can be

read as his simple appreciation of them but if we read all ten of his fictional

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works (yet autobiographical in form), we understand how in his first work

these sexual relationships can also be understood as Laferrière’s symbolic and

initial engagement with the city of Montréal.

Vieux’s sexual experiences with young white women can also be read

as a conquest of white space(s) and as an expression of his desire to engage in

an intimate and passionate relationship with Other geographical spaces.

Furthermore, his symbolic engagement with White America, parodied through

his sexual encounters with White women, needs to be read as a tongue-in-

cheek caricature of the negative stereotypes he mocks through humorous

renditions of sexual conquest. What is particularly effective in his use of satire

along sexual lines is illustrated in the ambivalence of who is being mocked: Is

it the black man or the white woman, or both? Chapter headings such as «Et

voila Miz Littérature qui me fait une de ces pipes» or « Le pénis nègre et la

démoralisation de l’Occident » or « Le chat nègre a neuf queues » illustrate

Laferrière’s playful yet sardonic tone. Perhaps the most telling chapter title is

the last one: « On ne naît pas Nègre, on le devient! » Borrowed from Simone

de Beauvoir’s famous quotation: « On ne naît pas femme, on le devient », the

message is one of social construction. Laferrière thus reminds the reader that

identity with all of its identifiable characteristics of color, sexuality, beauty,

attraction, etc. is assigned to individuals by others, a concept created through

what a particular society and culture deems appropriate. I read Laferrière’s

play of sexual spaces between a black man and white women as parody. When

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Vieux meets one of Miz Littérature’s friends and she immediately ask him «

Tu viens d’où? » he is unimpressed (Laferrière, Comment faire l’amour 112):

À chaque fois qu’on me pose ce genre de question, comme ça, sans

prévenir, sans qu’il ait été question, au paravant, du National

Geographic, je sens monter en moi un irrésistible désir de meurtre….Il

n’y a rien à faire, c’est une snob, Miz Snob (112).

Laferrière mocks culturally appropriate markers of conduct that negatively

define black men as objects of curiosity.

Moreover Vieux’s description of his sexual experiences with white

women traces the image of « le nègre » as a caricature rather than a real

person. This leaves the reader wondering about Laferrière’s motives. Is humor

or parody the goal? Is there a more complex dynamic at play? Is the focus then

a desire for real intimacy between the races or a desire to reverse roles of

dominance? Various examples throughout the text suggest that it is a

combination of all these factors:

quand on commence à déballer les phantasmes, chacun en prend pour

son compte…il n’y a pratiquement pas de femmes dans ce roman. Mais

des types. Il y a des Nègres et des Blanches. Du point de vue humain,

le Nègre et la Blanche n’existent pas (153).

Such quotations suggest that labels, even references such as black and white

are constructed images, often far removed from reality. These references

ultimately offer readers a unique and humorous approach in (de)constructing

racial lines and appreciating the bonds of attraction humans develop for the

other even when they consider the other different or inferior.

In her short story Histoire noire, Suzanne Lantagne empowers

blackness by suggesting that it embodies the “source of life, of enjoyment”

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(qtd. in Clarke 4). In this story, King is an African who speaks Italian, English

« et probablement zoulou » (19). Like Laferrière, the narrator illustrates her

sexual desire for black men as she parodies black stereotypes to explore and

question her sexual desires. Men like King inspire her simply because they are

black, cultured and educated. King explains the reasons for her attraction as

follows:

Avec un Blanc, j’aurais l’impression d’être gênante; il regarderait

autour, serait légèrement mal à l’aise et surtout ne saurait pas quoi faire

de ses deux mains. Mon partenaire noir me suivait, connaissait le désir

derrière le moindre de mes sourires…me tenait, me provoquait, me

manipulait, me consolait, me regardait, m’embrassait, me serrait, me

faisait rire et fondre, me prenait (20).

In the preceding quotation, verbs such as provoquer, manipuler, and prendre,

permit Lantagne to engage in Fanonesque rhetoric, reversing the hierarchical

black/white binary. The power of seduction and control falls in the hand of

black men. Like Lantagne, Laferrière also toys with stereotypes, mocking the

underlying white fear of interracial sexuality. Are white women fascinated by

Vieux because he is black? « On a déjà vu des jeunes filles blanches, anglo-

saxonne, protestantes, dormir avec un Nègre et se réveiller le lendemain sous

un baobab, en pleine brousse, à discuter des affaires du clan avec les femmes

du village » (Laferrière, Comment faire l’amour 83). Once again, Laferrière

playfully, perhaps wilfully, transforms these white women as « femme[s] du

village » toying with their independence and their autonomy.

Braziel situates Laferrière’s text “within an African American grand

narrative” (880) to point “to the ways in which black masculinity and black

male sexuality are always framed by a racialized erotic economy defined

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within the parameters of white, masculine, heterosexual parameters that trap

black men” (881). Laferrière’s transgressive tone is evident when he has Vieux

state, «JE VEUX BAISER SON IDENTITÉ» (81). These capitalized words

emphasize Vieux’s explicit desire to bring his lover, in his words, «à ma

merci» (81). This «baise métaphysique, » also blurs the colour lines and

permits Vieux to symbolically reclaim his African identity (81):

[Elle] est couchée sur le dos. OFFERTE [in capital letters

emphasizing her openness and her vulnerability]….Cette fille

judéo-chrétienne, c’est mon Afrique à moi. Une fille née pour

le pouvoir. En tout cas, qu’est-ce qu’elle fait ainsi au bout de

ma pine nègre? (80)

Each of Vieux’s sexual relationships with white women metaphorically

bridges the racial divide. « Ce n’est pas tant baiser avec un Nègre qui peut

terrifier. Le pire, c’est dormir avec lui. Dormir, c’est se livrer totalement. C’est

le plus que NU. Nu Plus…danger de véritable communication » (83). Since all

his lovers spend the night with him, we could say that Vieux experiences a

deeper intimacy with these women.

If I adopt Laferrière’s satirical tone, I would suggest that how

individuals choose to relate to some more intimately than to others is

dependent on what is en vogue at a particular moment in time. Vieux’s

dialogue resonates inside an en vogue commentary through such comments :

« BAISER NÈGRE, C’EST BAISER AUTREMENT. L’Amérique aime

foutre AUTREMENT. LA VENGEANCE NÈGRE ET LA MAUVAISE

CONSCIENCE BLANCHE AU LIT, ÇA FAIT UNE DE CES NUITS » (19).

Such comments should not be interpreted literally. I believe that Laferrière

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wishes to provoke his readers. He invites them to participate in a performative

understanding of culture, perhaps to question the way society (in the 1980s)

views relationships between white and black people. At the same time, he

sardonically plays with sexual interactions to erase past injustices against

black people. « Le Grand Nègre de Harlem a le vertige d’enculer la fille du

propriétaire de toutes les baraques insalubres de la 125e…, la baisant pour

toutes les réparations que son salaud de père n’a jamais effectuées…LA

HAINE DANS L’ACTE SEXUEL EST PLUS EFFICACE QUE

L’AMOUR » (19). The reader must take such comments as they are meant.

The sense of conquest along with the need for black dominance is palpable in

the preceding quotation. Whether it is delivered satirically or seriously, the

underlying intention to collapse and reverse the notion of white dominance

cannot be ignored. It is often stated that humor allows individuals to deliver

messages they are otherwise afraid to voice. Like all art forms, humor is an

important tool to address issues that people are otherwise uncomfortable

expressing.

Laferrière’s brand of satire is mocking, sarcastic and always

ambivalent in its messages. This ambivalence resonates in every experience,

every incident, and through almost every piece of information he shares with

his readers. He explains sexuality and color lines as some sort of cruel fad of

the moment, one that encourages a certain wonton, transgressive behavior. As

he states, if the focus in the 80s is the color black, in the 70s it was red.

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« Dans les années soixante-dix, l’Amérique était encore bandée sur le Rouge.

Les étudiantes blanches faisaient leur B.A. sexuelle quasiment dans les

réserves indiennes » (18). Such lines he draws between sarcasm and humour

are fine ones and Laferrière exploits them fully.

Thus sexual relationships between Vieux and white women may be

read satirically and polemically as acts of vindication. In as much as Laferrière

parodies the role of the over-sexed black man, he also mocks the role of white

women who feel the need to validate their sense of broadmindedness by

engaging in a conversation or in a sexual relationship with a black man. In

doing so, these women symbolically acquiesce to the black man. By giving

these women nicknames such as Miz Littérature, Miz Sophisticated Lady, Miz

Snob, Miz Chat, etc. Vieux not only strips these women of an individual

identity, he parodies their personalities as he empowers himself. Each woman

is a prototype of all the others who fit this description. Thus, by sleeping with

one Miz Littérature, he sleeps with all of them. Each encounter may be

interpreted as Vieux’s metaphoric conquest of Other white, wealthy socialites

studying at McGill University and ultimately of white America. « C’est que

dans l’échelle des valeurs occidentales, la Blanche est inférieure au Blanc et

supérieure au Nègre » (48). Laferrière parodies sexual desires as black. The

reader is never certain of who controls whom in the « RÔLE DES

COULEURS DANS LA SEXUALITÉ » of who is superior and who is

inferior (49). Through such ambivalent states, Laferrière succeeds in

illustrating the potent connection between power and sexuality. On the one

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hand, Laferrière parodies black and white stereotypes to contest past and

present notions of white superiority and the complex spaces of black

inferiority. On the other hand, in Barthesian terms, his self-identification

process is “an unfixed repertoire of many subject-positions,” focusing on his

“inability to make cohere all the jostled and jolted “subjects” (Smith 107). “In

this mobility … [he derives] a certain pleasure–the pleasure of being the place

of transgression in relation to the cerned subject [he] is presumed to be”

(Smith, 107). This is a site of transgressed jouissance, a symbolic code which

focuses on the multiplicity of the subject. “Jouissance is specifically

transgressive and it marks the crossing by the human agent of the symbolic

codes which attempt to keep us in place as one subject” (107). Laferrière

enters a “dialogical engagement with history and fantasy,” (Smith 154). He

assigns the black man a transgressive power. By focusing on Vieux’s sexual

relationships with different white women, Laferrière enters, one could even

say conquers, white spaces over and over again. In a paper entitled “Ethnicity

and race: Canadian minority writing at a crossroads,” Enoch Padolsky suggests

that Laferrière’s “sexual encounters and identity musings … [with] “white”

Westmount “imperialist British-Canadian women” corresponds with “his own

“race-oriented” (and gendered) discourse” (9). Positions of white power are

reversed, collapsed through Laferrière’s parody of sexual relationships.

Richard Rodriguez

In Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory published in 1981, those in

power are white and they speak English. Rodriguez laments about his move

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away from his Mexican culture and his assimilation into the American one. In

this work, he expresses his disdain for any overt forms of negotiation between

cultures and his distaste for any form of segregation that denies him full

American citizenship. Readers learn of Rodriguez’s difficulties adapting to the

social and political climate in Sacramento, California in the 1960s and 1970s.

He knows about 50 words in English when he begins his schooling. Rodriguez

categorizes English as the “language of public society” (19) and Spanish as the

“language of home…the language of joyful return” (16). However by

forsaking his Spanish culture and language to master English, and by fully

assimilating into an American cultural lifestyle, Rodriguez loses his intimate

connection to home and to his parents thus illustrating how linguistic code-

switching is not a site of creative connectivity in his experiences.

Rodriguez negotiates selfhood inside an American group dynamic.

First, he forsakes certain aspects of his Mexican origins believing that such a

sacrifice will allow him to construct a more successful American self. He

conforms to an American vision of subjectivity dictated by white dominant

cultural values. Remaining in the closet about his homosexuality until his 30s

means that Rodriguez’s adolescence and early adult life translate his sense of

self-hood negatively. In numerous chapters of Hunger of Memory he illustrates

this insecurity through deprecating comments about himself. His lack of self-

confidence may be understood as fear of how he believes others perceive him,

an example of Beck’s social self. Coming out about his homosexuality would

have been difficult, even dangerous for Rodriguez. This may account for his

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silence, his fear and ultimately his inability to embrace his multiple

subjectivities with the same humor as Laferrière or ease as D’Alfonso. The

personal void he suffers as a consequence of cultural sacrifices and his

repressed homosexuality are key factors that prevent readers from seeing his

intimate engagement with Others and an absence of a Barthesian relation

privilégiée. His desire is for group privilege, American privilege. This is in

stark contrast to Gloria Anzaldúa’s vision of cultural and sexual politics. For

her

... lineage is ancient

...firmly planted

...toward that current, the soul of tierra madre-

[her] origin (Borderlands 224)

Rodriguez does not exhibit the same love for his Hispanic lineage. While his

disconnection to his culture and to his sexuality may not have been voluntary,

it plays an integral role, negatively I might add, in how he negotiates his voice.

It was not until the publication of Days of Obligation: An Argument

with My Mexican Father (published in 1991) that Rodriguez would speak of

his homosexuality in his writing. Even in this later work, Rodriguez remains

private, divulging very little about this aspect of his personal life. In Hunger

Of Memory the readers’ understanding of Rodriguez’s choice to become an

American scholarship boy can be negatively perceived quite easily because

this key piece of information about his identity is missing. His

autobiographical story and chapters read like essays rather than a personal

story. This essay writing style is an illustration of Rodriguez’s desire to remain

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private about many matters. However his need for privacy prevents readers

from accessing or understanding his more intimate thoughts.

In his subsequent work, Days Of Obligation Rodriguez speaks of

homosexual identity in the same way he speaks of cultural identity, in political

not personal terms. He clearly wishes to keep a distance between his private

and public worlds. Although “in 1975, the state of California legalized

consensual homosexuality” it was far from being a publicly embraced identity

(Days of Obligation 35). The one label Rodriguez seems comfortable

embracing openly is one that recognizes him as American. “A scholarship boy,

and sexually secretive…I did not know the great drama of integration” (22).

Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson explain that “life narratives appear to

be transparently simple. Yet they are amazingly complex” (15). I would agree.

After reading Days of Obligation and his later work Brown: The Last

Discovery of America published in 2001, I have a different understanding of

the decisions and sacrifices Rodriguez makes to turn himself American-public.

Rodriguez explains that his book “is necessarily political…for public

issues…in some sense…political because it concerns my movement away

from the company of family and into the city” (7). He divides his life story

into a series of essays: Middle-class Pastoral, Aria, The Achievement of

Desire, Credo, Complexion, Profession and Mr. Secrets. Rodriguez speaks

about what it means to be “a socially disadvantaged child… [and how his

assimilation] as a middle-class American” occurred (3). Although implicit,

Rodriguez’s writing enriches my discussion of connectivity between cultures

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as an example that defends the benefits of such a connection precisely through

its absence. As Madeline Ruth Walker points out, he “rejects Chicano identity

... for complex reasons that stem from contradictions in Mexican history and

the cluster of class-race beliefs” he addresses in Hunger (“Converting the

Church” 81). Yet Rodriguez remains, in spite of his best efforts, (categorized)

outside the umbrella of white American culture, destined to roam literary

shelves under Other literatures, a role he does not enjoy: “Three decades later,

the price of being a published brown author is that one cannot be shelved near

those one has loved. The price is segregation” even from the literature he has

grown to love most (26). He wants his literary contributions to be recognized

as American works. “I trusted white literature because I was able to attribute

universality to white literature, because it did not seem to be written for me”

(Rodriguez, Brown 27). The preceding quotation from his work published in

2001 reinforces assimilation and a homogeneous American vision of selfhood

as negative consequences for immigrants, ultimately a failure to creatively

connect between languages and cultures. Rodriguez’s desire to remain outside

hybrid categorizations of identity backfire when he finds himself awkwardly

positioned between Mexican and American cultural spaces, liminal and

isolating at both ends.

The most important theme to my writing is now impurity. My mestizo

boast : … a queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate

Chinese city in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation (35).

This quotation appears in Brown and classifies Rodriguez’s identity as a series

of labels, ones that challenge or collapse boundaries between dominant and

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peripheral cultures. Although he does not embrace hybridized identification

with the same openness as Anzaldúa does, in Brown he illustrates his growing

peace with being mestizo. Walker argues that “Rodriguez’s narrative is about

the absorption of culture rather than by culture. It is a critical means of

“cultural and other transformations” suggesting how absorption of culture

implies “a robust self” (82). However I think Rodriguez better fits Walker’s

reference of someone who “represents an undeveloped self” a product of the

political and socially constructed environment of the 1960s in the United

States (82). For this reason, Rodriguez’s selfhood corresponds with Beck’s

model of the social self as someone trapped by outside constraints of whom

and how he should be.

Through his narrative, Rodriguez illustrates his insecurity about his

physical appearance and his dark Indian features resulting in his inability to

explore Beck’s model of the essential self. Arguably, he suffers from low self-

esteem. Rodriguez spends a large part of his youth and adult life suppressing

his Other identities as a Chicano and as a homosexual refusing “to participate

in the expected arguments ... of his people” (85). I believe that Rodriguez’s

repressed homosexuality in Hunger is an illustration of the latent struggles

between binary positions that Walker suggests he takes on. She describes his

identity as polarized. In her opinion, he chooses between “private/public,

Spanish/English, Mexican/American, Catholic/Protestant, working

class/middle class, inauthentic/authentic, tragic/comic, feminine/masculine”

(82). I understand binary positions as ones dictated by social and political

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norms. Therefore they do not always correspond to, or respect, how

individuals can explore their selfhood creatively. For this reason, I am not sure

if Rodriguez is a tragic hero or victim. I believe he is both. As much as

Rodriguez tries, he cannot simply be American or Mexican. In varying shapes,

he remains tied to both labels. It is only in Brown that Rodriguez’s dualities

and hybridized identification surface. Moreover had he been able to express

his Chicano and homosexual spaces openly in Hunger of Memory, I am

convinced that this first instalment of his autobiographical story would

resonate as a more hybridized narrative.

Since Rodriguez makes no mention of his homosexuality in Hunger of

Memory the performative aspects of his identity remain hidden to readers.

While I read Laferrière’s ambivalent address of issues of race as playful and

satirical, this is clearly not Rodriguez’s strategy. His ideas about race and

culture come across as a bilan of pedagogy. He claims that “diversity admits

everything, stands for nothing” (Rodriguez, Brown 169). It is however

interesting to see how Rodriguez projects great strength of character when he

speaks of his devotion to Catholicism. This aspect of his intimate side he

shares with readers.

There is much in Christianity that I use, steal, learn from, borrow,

depend upon. Its inability to teach me about my experience of love is

insufficient for me to walk away (Walker 99).

I find it ironic that Rodriguez is willing to overlook the Church’s inability to

educate him about love since the basis of religious faith is about love and

devotion. In my opinion, the church is another example of an external force

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that negatively contains Rodriguez and prevents him from publicly claiming a

hybridized, homosexual identity.

Even in Brown as Rodriguez’s narrative takes on a hybridized desire

for an Americanized identity, he remains silent about his homosexuality and

how this impacts on his understanding of identity and his life experiences.

When I go into your house, and I suddenly realize that you are not

foreign, when I begin to borrow your language and your humor,

when your mother invites me to dinner, and I begin to eat your

food, when I begin to walk like you down the street, which is what

Americans do, we all walk like each other, then I become brown

(Interview Moyers & Rodriguez).

In spite of his acceptance of a browned American identity, Rodriguez remains

trapped inside a zone of white Americanism because the most critical element

of his identity, his homosexuality, still appears to be a taboo subject, at least in

his autobiographical works. If autobiography is a translation of an individual’s

life and personal experiences, then I understand his masked and guarded

sharing of his homosexuality as a negative suppression. His narrative style

continues to illustrate the importance he places on his public voice. The reader

is not privileged to enter the zones of his private voice. Even though he speaks

in the first person, Rodriguez’s autobiography resonates as a third person

biographical story with significant missing links in how his life experiences

shaped the person he has become. As a consequence, his autobiographical

story reads more like a persuasive essay rather than a personal life story. He

laments in a professional voice about his early life, his struggles as a child to

learn English, and his eventual integration into American academic circles.

According to John Eakin, “language in autobiography operates as a kind of

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‘focusing glass,’ [it] brings together the personal, unassimilated experiences of

the writer and the shared values of his culture” (73). In Rodriguez’s work, his

intimate thoughts, personal experiences and the shared values of his culture

become deformed inside an American representation of identity. I read this

form of narrative as a distorted vision of self-hood. Rodriguez seems to exist

in a liminal state, not quite Mexican or American.

The distance he places between himself and his Mexican cultural

origins initially appear legitimate. He does not feel that he can simultaneously

nurture linguistic ties with his Mexican and American worlds. Learning

English separates, even alienates, him from Spanish. However there are

examples in the work of his deep-rooted sense of ontogenetic insecurity.

Mastering English and becoming a successful academic separates Rodriguez

from his family and his Mexican culture. “If because of my schooling, I had

grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given

me ways of speaking and caring about that fact” (Rodriguez, Hunger 72). He

refers to himself as a “comic victim of two cultures” (5). There is nothing

polemical about his narrative. Rodriguez wishes “to be colorless and to feel

complete freedom of movement” (140). He seeks recognition and approval

inside a vision of English American nationalism and an English education he

labels “white freedom” (Brown 142). Below the surface of his eloquent writing

style, a deep melancholic chord resonates.

Being colorless and experiencing complete freedom are elusive

concepts in Rodriguez’s world. He speaks out against bilingual education

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believing that such a system “reinforces feelings of public separateness”

dividing people instead of bringing them together (34). Although he takes a

personal stance against affirmative action, he admits, “I complied...I permitted

myself to be prized...I accepted its benefits” (152). In spite of such benefits,

Rodriguez’s Americanized education does not give him “a centered, unified

subject or self” (David Vincent and Nan Hackette qtd in Eakin 79). He speaks

against bilingual education, affirmative action, and any system that expects

him to move between the American and Mexican cultures and languages, yet

he contradicts these affirmations by accepting the perks that come from such

policies meant to equalize opportunities for immigrants. Moreover, the value

he assigns to minority literature in course curriculums is colored by how he

perceives it will be understood by the minority public. He states that “any

novel or play about the lower class will necessarily be alien to the culture it

portrays” (Rodriguez, Hunger 161). Is this a good reason to veto its existence?

Rodriguez remains skeptical about the place of Hispanic literature(s) on the

bookshelves of academic departments.

Contrary to Rodriguez’s doubtful narrative on this issue, Anzaldúa’s

mestiza vision of culture encourages the value of Hispanic literature(s). Her

polemical writing style suggests that she writes about what she believes in. She

does not appear to focus on readership or politically correct discourse. Her

writing illustrates her desire to be understood on a personal and passionate

level. Through her polemical writing style she also incites her rebel-spirit to

surface, to find the courage to live against the grain of what society dictates by

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setting new precedents. She refers to herself as “mediator…through our

literature, art, corridos, and folktales we must share our history with them

so…they won’t turn people away because of their racial fears and ignorances”

(Anzaldúa, Borderlands 107). Her desire for hispanic curriculum brings

together pedagogy and the performative because she places great importance

on past historical experience and rewrites those aspects of that past that

negatively contain her identity. Rodriguez’s narrative style illustrates a more

practical objective. He does not believe that Hispanic literatures will be read

by a mainstream audience. By denying its importance, he takes, in my opinion,

a negative position on the value such literature holds, both in a historical and

present context. Although access to such works may not reach all mainstream

audiences, I think he misses a point that Anzaldúa clearly advocates and that is

the importance of encouraging such works to be written and to be included in

academic circles!

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, minority writers and their voices

represented a marginalized population and in his writing Rodriguez illustrates

this reality. Through his choices to assimilate, to feel American in every sense

of the word, he inadvertently supports the marginalization of his cultural

Spanish community. His dark skin prevents him from fully escaping his world

he views as disadvantaged. “You can say I’m self-consciously black”

(Rodriguez, Brown 138). Such references suggest that he wears his color

uncomfortably. There is a rather dismal tone in such words. Moreover, he

certainly does not, as Anzaldúa does, take on any role as mediator between

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Mexicans and white Americans. Comments such as: “[f]rom childhood I have

resisted the notion of culture in Spanish” do not offer readers sufficient reason

to understand why (128). This resistance or an absence of understanding works

against Rodriguez’s construction of self-esteem and how readers perceive him.

In my opinion, it traps him further inside Beck’s vision of the social self as

conforming and imitative. Rodriguez explains his distance from his Mexican

culture.

Aztec ruins hold no special interest for me. I do not search Mexican

graveyards for ties to unnameable ancestors.... I also speak Spanish

today. And read Garcia Lorca and Garcia Marquez ... but what

consolation can that fact bring ... [?] What preoccupies me is

immediate: the separation I endure with my parents in loss (Rodriguez,

Hunger 5).

This cultural separation from his parents Rodriguez speaks of is an irreparable

disconnection. It is another consequence of his move towards an American

identity. Then, living secretively about his homosexuality means intimate

aspects of his selfhood remain hidden thus robbing him of self-esteem during

his youth and young adult life. The social and political environment he

experiences during his 30s and 40s dictate the precise ways Rodriguez chooses

not to embrace hybridized identification, code-switching and keep his

homosexuality a private matter. His public American spaces prevent him from

openly exposing and exploring his intimate spaces before readers and with

family.

Rodriguez also grows up feeling uncomfortably alien in his dark skin,

different even from his immediate family. His mother is often mistaken as

Italian or Portugese – “she looks as though she could be from southern

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Europe” – while his older brother’s skin “never darkened” like Rodriguez and

his “youngest sister is exotically pale, almost ashen” (Hunger 114-115). Even

his older sister, although as dark as Rodriguez, has “facial features...much less

harshly defined” (115). Rodriguez sees himself as “the only one in the family

whose face is severely cut to the line of ancient Indian ancestors” (115). There

seems no sense of pride in this declaration. When his mother discourages him

from playing in the sun, he confesses: “that incident anticipates the shame and

sexual inferiority I was to feel in later years because of my dark complexion”

(124). Rodriguez views his dark complexion as a negative marker of beauty:

I didn’t really consider my dark skin to be a racial characteristic…I felt

myself ugly….I felt my dark skin made me unattractive to

women….With disgust then I would come face to face with myself in

mirrors….I grew divorced from my body (125).

Of greater consequence, the preceding quotation alludes to his closeted

homosexuality during this period in his life. Moreover, Rodriguez is caught

inside models of desirability based on heterosexual standards. Here Ricœur’s

notion of oneself as another takes on a negative image. Self-loathing is a by-

product of his suppressed homosexuality. Rodriguez speaks of being

unattractive to women but it is in reality his interest in men that he cannot

qualify or speak of in his writing. I believe that his negative self-image is

further aggravated by his religious education. “I am often enough asked how it

is I call myself a gay Catholic. A paradox? ...What you are asking is how can I

be an upstanding one and the other….The answer is that I cannot reconcile. I

was born Catholic….I was born gay” (Brown 224). Rodriguez’s inability to

reconcile these two intimate aspects of himself further alienates him from who

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he wishes to be: “I lived my life in fragments … I knew nothing so dangerous

in the world as love, my kind of love … I mean my attempt to join the world”

(206). However he cannot wear his religion and his homosexuality together.

His religion, like other religions, forbids it! Rodriguez also admits that “the

way we are constructed constructs love? Limits love?” (207). Here I agree

with him. How can we openly love another, or participate in a Barthesian

relation privilégiée or even a Ricœurian concept of oneself as another, if we

cannot openly love ourselves and those defined as Others? Such limitations

project a negative image of difference.

Rodriguez wishes to disassociate himself from “the connection

between dark skin and poverty” (117). This disassociation begins in his

childhood. It was “an accident of geography…where all [his]…classmates

were white, many the children of doctors and lawyers and business

executives” (11). Being in a school with upper-class white students,

Rodriguez views his color as a barrier to achieving social and economic

success. He does not have any Mexican role models in his community who

live in an upper-class lifestyle, so is vying for such a position a normal

reaction? His desire to silence his voice as a Mexican Other answers this

question by illustrating his wish (through the choices he makes or is forced to

make) to join the ranks of the upper-class.

Rodriguez learns that he cannot be a successful Mexican and a

successful American. Moreover, he feels he can best enjoy the benefits and

privileges of being American by focusing on a strictly American-style

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education. I define an American-style education through Rodriguez’s own

definition of the scholarship boy. His perspective of himself as a scholarship

boy is a rather bleak one. He feels incomplete, unworthy, lacking a real

identity:

The scholarship boy does not straddle, cannot reconcile, the two great

opposing cultures of his life....There is no trace of his parents’ accent in

his speech....He lifts an opinion from Coleridge, takes something from

Frye or Empson or Leavis. He even repeats exactly his professor’s

earlier comments. All his ideas are clearly borrowed. He seems to have

no thought of his own...the scholarship boy makes only too apparent

his profound lack of self-confidence (Hunger 66).

By italicizing the word self in the preceding quotation, Rodriguez employs it in

two ways: as a lack of selfhood and what I read as a lack of Beck’s essential

self. There is nothing unique or inventive in his status as scholarship boy. He

cannot love himself, i.e. love all aspects of himself culturally and sexually. As

a result, his notion of selfhood, his ontological self is “a construct of a

construct [contained, even trapped, inside his vision of white American

nationalism]…whether literary or psychological” (Eakin 102). His inability to

fully embrace Mexican and American cultural codes scars him negatively.

Moreover, suppressing his homosexuality (whatever his reasons) negatively

colors his perspective. Rodriguez’s status as a scholarship boy belies his low

self-esteem. An American education depreciates the value he attributes to

Mexican culture. By adopting the role of a scholarship boy he robs himself of

an intimate Mexican identity. As a scholarship boy he considers himself “a

very bad student...the great mimic...the very last person in class who ever feels

obliged to have an opinion of his own” (67). Through such observations,

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Rodriguez illustrates his implicit desire to be an authentic person. I translate

this desire for authenticity as Rodriguez’s latent need to embrace his Mexican

culture and language and live openly as a homosexual. It is his writing voice

that allows him to embrace such authenticity because in his real world he

cannot seem to reconcile being American with being authentic.

His lack of an intimate or creative connectivity between his Mexican

and American selves prevents him from experiencing a Barthesian relation

privilégiée as a Mexican, as a homosexual, at least before his readers. Thus

Rodriguez’s loneliness and fragmented vision of himself position him

negatively as a model of hybrid identity. His discourse conveys a Lacanian

“imaginary” what Kaja Silverman describes as “the subject’s experience … [it

is] dominated by identification and duality” (157). A public American identity

contains Rodriguez inside a zone of pleasure which “relies upon the fixity of

the “subject within the codes and conventions it inhabits” (Smith 107).

Rodriguez’s individual subjectivity, a model of Beck’s social self, may also be

understood as Althusserian because it is “generated through social forces”

(“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an

investigation)” 1478). Rodriguez’s “real conditions of existence” such as his

homosexuality and his linguistic and cultural ties to Mexico are silenced

(1498). He confesses that he “distances him[self] from a life he loved, even

from his own memory of himself,” (Rodriguez, Hunger 48). Thus he cannot

sustain a positive image of his essential self or construct a loving self-regard.

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In her essay, “On Not Speaking Chinese: Postmodern Ethnicity and the

Politics of Diaspora”, Ien Ang speaks of autobiography “as a more or less

deliberate, rhetorical construction of a ‘self’ for public not private purposes:

the displayed self is a strategically fabricated performance, one which stages a

useful identity, an identity which can be put to work” (4). Rodriguez’s

narrative fits Ing’s comments about public identities. For instance, in Chapter

Five entitled Profession, he rejects affirmative action in education and

“summer study grants…[or] teaching assistantships” because he sees that he is

a recipient namely because of his “Spanish surname or the dark mark in the

space indicating…[his] race” (Rodriguez, Hunger 143). Essays he writes

against such “affirmative action” programs emphasize his disdain for such

programs (148). Although he is not qualified to speak as one, he is often

invited to conferences as a “Chicano intellectual” (162). He blames

those in White America…[who] would anoint [him] to play for them

some drama of ancestral reconciliation….[M]arked by [his] indelible

color they easily suppose that [he is] unchanged by social mobility, that

[he] can claim unbroken ties with [his] past” (5).

He wears his title as a “Chicano intellectual” uncomfortably, reluctantly

acknowledging the benefits it accords him.

Rodriguez’s academic success, the foundation of his public American

identity, allows him to escape his status as the “socially disadvantaged… son

of working-class [Mexican immigrant] parents” as he moves closer to realizing

his American dream (12). This movement away from Spanish and “the

company of his family” distances him even further from his Mexican culture.

He believes that “the child who learns to read about his nonliterate ancestors

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[rather than actively engage in their ancestral world] necessarily separates

himself from their way of life” (161). Such comments elicit a very negative

reaction from Hispanic students in his academic milieu. Rodriguez senses their

“scorn” and after meeting him they label him “a coconut–someone brown on

the outside, white on the inside” (161-162). He refers to himself as “the

bleached academic – more white than the anglo professors,” the model of

ethnic representation that others “feared ever becoming” (162). Sadly,

Rodriguez acknowledges how his education as a scholarship boy robs him of

his Mexican identification.

Even though he refers to the local “ghetto black teenagers” as “the

outsiders”, their “accented versions of English” are reminders of his loss, the

Spanish accent he no longer possesses (31). These teenagers remind him that

“being loud–so self-sufficient and unconcerned … [is] a romantic gesture

against public acceptance. Listening to their shouted laughter” he feels

“envious, envious of their brazen intimacy” (31). He lacks this closeness

within his linguistic spaces. Moreover his movement between academic and

cultural spaces is a constant reminder of his negatively Othered self.

Rodriguez has difficulty embracing his subjectivity in multiple terms because

his Mexican identity has been weakened. His assimilation into an American

vision of cultural identity means that he cannot be intimately connected to

more than one culture and language. This prevents him from negotiating

identity as a passage, or negotiation, between cultures. “The price of entering

white America is an acid bath, a bleaching bath–a transfiguration–that burns

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away memory. I mean the freedom to become; I mean the freedom to imagine

oneself free” (140). Sociologist Anthony Giddens suggests that ontological

security develops from “an emotional, and to some degree…cognitive

sense…in the reliability of persons … [where]…basic trust [is linked to]…self

identity … [and] the appraisal of others” (38). Rodriguez cannot locate this

ontological security inside the appraisal of a white American centre. Moreover

he chooses not to travel between cultures so his Mexican culture becomes a

hindrance in his success as an American. This is where I believe he fails. He

experiences further loss because he can no longer engage in a relation

privilégiée with his parents in Spanish. Moreover, his status as an American

“scholarship boy” leaves him in a state of inner deadness. Anthony Giddens

employs this term to describe individuals who “blend with the environment so

as to escape being the target of the dangers which haunt them…[as a result]

the individual feels morally ‘empty’ because he [or she] lacks the ‘warmth of a

loving self-regard” (54). Rodriguez’s inability to communicate effectively in

Spanish with his family erases the intimate connection he shared with them.

Moreover, I view his silence about his homosexuality as the key factor that

haunts him and the dominant cause of his inner deadness:

A high school student…visited me…for an interview….He said it was

cool with him that I was gay but he wanted to know how I measured

the influence of homosexuality…on [my] writing, since [I] never say

(222)…. [Rodriguez admits:] It’s true, I never say…Walt Whitman I

said. Whitman’s advantage was that– prohibited from admitting the

specific–he learned to speak of the many….Of every hue and caste am

I, he sang, while the heterosexual nation tore itself asunder as blue or

gray (Rodriguez, Brown 223).

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His adoption of the English language robs him of the intimate connection he

once experienced speaking Spanish. “Always there are moments in the text

when that impression of narrative coherence breaks down…in digressions,

omissions, gaps, and silences about certain things, in contradiction” (Smith

and Watson 64). I believe that Rodriguez’s public spaces teach him to view his

differences – his skin color and his homosexuality – as obstacles to his

construction of American selfhood. As Smith and Watson point out “when we

read or listen to autobiographical narratives, we need to attend to methods of

self-examination, introspection, and remembering…And sometimes [a

narrator] refuses the very possibility of self-knowing” (71). Clearly, for

Rodriguez self-knowing is a private journey. It appears difficult to separate

Rodriguez’s political agenda from his personal one. I continue to interpret his

narrative as an essay, perfectly argued yet somehow lacking Chutzpah, a

Jewish term used in contemporary North American speech to express

admiration for non-conformist but gutsy audacity. His narrative style, how he

tells his autobiographical story, is an illustration of conflict rather than creative

connectivity between cultures and languages.

Antonio D’Alfonso

While Rodriguez’s story focuses on his move away from his Mexican

cultural identity into a white-washed version of an American identity, in

Antonio D’Alfonso’s Avril ou l’anti-passion, the protagonist Fabrizio explores

hybrid identity by straddling three linguistic and cultural spaces. D’Alfonso’s

writing suggests that traveling between cultures is a natural aspect of

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immigrant life in Montréal. As a cosmopolitan city, I view Montreal as a city

that boasts a Ricœurian personality of soi-même comme un autre where images

of self-hood are constructed and re-imagined as Other positions. For instance,

Fabrizio lives in Montréal as « trois personnes en une seule » (Avril 180). The

first three chapters of D’Alfonso’s work focuses on Fabrizio’s parents Lina

and Guido and their life in Italy. Fabrizio shares excerpts from Lina’s

personal journal and letters Guido writes to Lina during his military service.

He traces the events that bring his parents to Montréal. They serve as

important testimonials and symbols of cultural connection to Italy. Fabrizio’s

narrative of these testimonials illustrates his desire to give meaning to his

parents life before they come to Montréal. Moreover by speaking of Italy,

Fabrizio assigns a strong cultural importance to his Italian origins. Readers

learn that the move from Italy to Canada is harder for Lina than it is for her

husband Guido. «Je suis née à Guglionesi et c’est là que je veux mourir» (38).

However she is hopeful that a better life awaits her in Canada. « Comment ne

pas croire à un paradis lorsque le pays dans lequel nous vivions ne présentait

plus aucun espoir? » (38) Guido on the other hand understands that « il faut

partir au plus vite, rester ne sert à rien, sinon à se nourrir des fausses images

que nous avons de nous-mêmes….Je crois que vivre dans ce pays est devenu

impossible » (26). Having served time in the military, Guido experiences the

negative effects of war first hand. « Il est furieux de voir les Allemands

pilonner la terre de ses parents » (15). Even after Italy is freed from the

Germans, Lina recognizes that the road ahead is a difficult one. « Nous avons

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besoin de toutes nos forces pour reconstruire le monde » (20). In April, 1950,

Lina leaves for Canada. April is therefore symbolic of freedom and change.

Hence the title of this work as Avril ou l’anti-passion seems fitting. Moreover

this information about his parents’ life in Italy frames the importance Fabrizio

assigns to travel between cultures and languages. He illustrates the strong ties

he shares to his Italian culture through his relationship with his parents and he

promotes a hybridized identification by assigning value to his Québécois

identity.

Just as April marks an important moment in Italy’s history and April

marks Lina’s departure from Italy, Fabrizio’s personal story begins in April,

1959 and it ends in December, 1988. This portion of the novel is divided into

the following chapter headings: Notre maison/Cicatrices/Bête

noire/Désamour/La jalousie des deux amis/La guerre/Parlons un peu de ma

famille/Lasagne in brodo/Romance/La messe des morts/Un cauchemar/Le

parfait esclave/Peter est invité à dîner/Le couple/Le téléphone/Nonna

Angiolina/Une promenade avec Mario/Journal d’un film inachevé/Antigone et

Hémon/La désincarnation/Un suicide en chœur/La mise en scène. Like

Laferrière, D’Alfonso’s numerous chapter headings illustrate his creative

performative side, a characteristic of Beck’s model of the essential self. I list

these headings here to provide a basic framework of comparison between these

chapter headings and the ones Laferrière employs in his work. While

Laferrière focuses on headings that satirically reconstruct or deconstruct the

image of the black man, D’Alfonso’s chapter headings illustrate the simple

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and more complex experiences that give shape to Fabrizio’s hybrid

subjectivity. Titles such as Notre maison/Lasagne en brodo demonstrate the

effortless, loving elements that make up Fabrizio’s Italian life: his family and

his connection to food. « Je sais que je suis le fils d’un amour

absolu…omniprésent et solidaire…tout conflit a toujours été réglé à la

table » (148). Consuming food is synonymous with sharing love, culture, and

family. Thus private local Italian spaces frame Fabrizio’s public French and

English Canadian spaces. His negotiation as a hybrid subject, one who seeks

connectivity between Other cultures, is best understood through his connection

to Léah in Bête noire and Romance, Fabrizio’s relationship with his closest

friend Mario Berger in Une promenade avec Mario, and Fabrizio’s desire for

creative freedom as illustrated in La désincarnation and Journal d’un film

inachevé. His hybrid subjectivity is revealed through his interactions with

these Other aspects of his life. His friendship with Mario, a Québécois, and his

affair with Mario’s wife, Léah, a woman of Hungarian cultural origins, are

symbolic zones of creative connectivity and conflict between dominant and

Other populations. Moreover, his desire to produce a film that does not

address topics such as immigration validates Fabrizio’s need to define himself

outside dictated parameters of creativity and assert his creativity outside such

mainstream platforms.

Unlike Rodriguez and Laferrière, Fabrizio does not explicitly address

issues of race or gender as barriers in his construction of self-hood. His

godparents’ relationship serves as a positive model of the hybrid lifestyle he

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longs for. He describes his godfather as « un Notte québécois…tout ce qu’[il]

désire devenir » (Avril 63). His Montreal born Italian godfather marries a

Québécoise and Fabrizio cannot believe that she speaks his family’s Italian

dialect as fluently as his parents. I view her ability to speak Italian as

validation of code-switching, an aspect of « la modernité, de l’ouverture

québécoise » Fabrizio admires (62). Such narrative suggests that Fabrizio’s

personal story is an allegory of the Québécois and their process of negotiation

with Other cultural groups such as Italians. This may be why in the first film

he produces, Fabrizio focuses on Antigone, a character without citizenship. «

Elle n’est d’aucun pays, ne possédant aucune langue maternelle, n’appartenant

à aucun parti politique » (59). By choosing to focus on Antigone as his heroine

rather than immigrant models (as he is often asked to address) Fabrizio

illustrates his implicit desire to live outside barriers of nationhood. This desire

to step outside socially constructed and constricting parameters of fixed

cultural origins mirrors Fabrizio’s need to live in a Ricœurian “kingdom of the

as if” a validation of Beck’s notion of the essential self. In D’Alfonso’s other

works, this concept of identity as a hybrid construction is omnipresent in his

stories, in his poetry and in his essays. Moreover D’Alfonso’s writing in

English, French, and more recently in Italian illustrates his creative connection

to different languages and cultures. D’Alfonso, like his protagonist Fabrizio,

negotiates identity as a passage of connectivity between different codes,

promoting a hybridized identification through his writing style.

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D’Alfonso grounds this connectivity between cultures in Avril through

Fabrizio’s negotiation of intimacy with Léah and Mario. In his essay, « La

Passion du retour: Ecritures italiennes au Québec, » Pierre Nepveu suggests

that « l’un des passages les plus révélateurs du roman est celui où Fabrizio se

retrouve une fois de plus avec son amante d’origine hongroise, avec laquelle il

trompe son meilleur ami québécois, Mario, triangle dont la dimension

symbolique interculturelle est assez savoureuse » (113). Since Léah stands

between Mario and Fabrizio, I view her Othered presence as a bridge that

unites and divides the Québécois from Other minority groups.

At 16, Fabrizio has his first meeting with Léah. In the chapter Bête

noire, he describes his first experiences with Léah. « Cette fille dont les yeux

ne se détachent plus de moi. Elle détourne la tête, mais pas les yeux »

(D’Alfonso, Avril 73). Fabrizio’s first sexual experience with her is one of

complete submission on his part. « Elle monte sur moi…ne bouge pas. Ne

respire pas…je ne fais absolument rien….Puis voilà que, tout d’un coup,

j’éjacule » (74). Fabrizio’s immediate submission may be understood as an

involuntary desire to engage intimately with Other spaces. Their sexual

intimacy continues even after Léah begins seeing Mario. Thus infidelity

becomes a marker of tensions between cultures. However Fabrizio’s inability

to break away from Léah may be understood as the push-and-pull for desire

and distance from the Other. It is a desire that unifies and divides the

Québécois from its Other populations.

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In her teens, Léah acquires a reputation. « Elle avait d’autres amants.

Aucun de nous ne sait vraiment la satisfaire ni la rendre heureuse » (76).

Fabrizio quickly discovers that she cannot be controlled. « Je suis libre de faire

ce qui me plait » (79). And what pleases her is Fabrizio’s best friend Mario.

« Je comprends parfaitement comment Léah a pu tomber amoureuse de cet

ami. Et… [Fabrizio] éclate en un rire énorme et terrible » (80). Like Léah,

Fabrizio is part of the other population in Québec so Léah’s desire to build a

solid relationship with Mario instead of Fabrizio may be read as her symbolic

choice to find belonging inside a Québécois context. Her betrayal and ongoing

affair with Fabrizio may be read as her simultaneously symbolic pull towards

Others.

As the third person entity in this story between Léah and Mario,

Fabrizio constructs his experiences of love as an outsider. In the chapter

Désamour Fabrizio speaks of his first experience with unrequited love. « Le

poème le plus laid du monde…un amour non partagé, le poème du

suicide….Je ne vois plus, je suis dans le noir des regards de l’autre » (80).

Blinded by his feelings for Léah, Fabrizio feels trapped. He describes his pain

as his inability to engage intimately with her. « Ne plus pouvoir rimer avec

celle que j’aime, voilà ma laideur, ma prison. Ce suicide de si mauvais goût je

te l’offre, amore » (82). Fabrizio cannot leave her anymore than Léah can

completely love him. He describes Léah as « quelqu’un endurci comme la

carapace d’un crustace…elle regénère les parties de son corps qu’on arrache »

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(101). Léah is a source of personal conflict in Fabrizio’s life. However as

Fabrizio explains, « elle m’éreinte et me prend la quasi-totalité de mon

énergie » but she supports his work (101). « Elle rend possible le tournage de

mon film sur Antigone, Le Choix » (101). This support for Fabrizio’s film may

be understood in two ways: as an act of friendship and as a validation of

Fabrizio’s desire to create something original, outside the parameters of

mainstream cinema. The two people Fabrizio loves dearly promote his artistic

career choices, thus symbolically entering his creative space(s). They also

represent cultural difference. In this way, the title Le Choix is entirely

appropriate. Moreover Fabrizio’s attraction to Léah, whom he describes as

« celle qui ne me ressemble pas » may be interpreted as his desire to embrace

those aspects of himself that Other him in the eyes of the dominant majority

(101). However his ability to love Léah in spite of differences points to the

importance of loving outside a mainstream cultural context.

In his work, Un vendredi du mois d’août, D’Alfonso illustrates this

idea. « On doit pouvoir aimer son compagnon pour ce qu’il est. Imaginez

signer un contrat avec quelqu’un pour ce qu’il doit être » (11). This notion of

loving someone as they are validates the importance of accepting difference(s)

in Others. Fabrizio is not proud of his affair with Léah « l’épouse de l’ami »

(105). He refers to himself as « le toxicomane et l’alcoolique…tout le temps

entre les cuisses de Léah et chaque fois le baiser partagé comme si c’était le

premier » (Avril 105). I read Fabrizio’s obsession with Léah as Barthesian.

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« Je fouille le corps de l’autre comme si je voulais voir ce qu’il y a dedans,

comme si la cause mécanique de mon désir était dans le corps adverse »

(Barthes, Fragments d’un discours amoureux 85). This idea of understanding

oneself is linked to understanding one’s desire for another in the preceding

quotation. I understand Fabrizio’s attraction to Léah as an all-encompassing

passion.

However Léah’s admission that she can never love Fabrizio is another

important aspect of connectivity between dominant and Other cultures. « Je

me suis fait avorter: je ne veux pas d’enfant de toi » (D’Alfonso, Avril 107).

By refusing to keep his baby, Léah illustrates her resistance to openly loving

Fabrizio. This inability to love Fabrizio may be understood as loyalty to Mario

in two ways: ethically because she is Mario’s wife whereas Mario is the bridge

between the Québécois and its Other populations. Therefore this connection

cannot be destroyed. Léah embodies difference and at the same time she

symbolizes division and union between cultures. This fascination for Others

may be understood in Ricœurian terms. « On cherche quoi au fond chez

l’autre? Soi-même? La différence? Je cherche peut-être le contraire de celle

que je suis » (133). Mario is the symbolic passage of connectivity between

dominant and peripheral cultures. Then Léah cannot leave Mario to be with

Fabrizio because this could be understood as a symbolic rupture between the

dominant and peripheral cultures.

Like Laferrière, D’Alfonso also addresses the notion of connectivity

between cultures through sexual and creative spaces. During a conversation

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with Mario (taken from the chapter Une promenade avec Mario), Fabrizio

explains the evolution of his film Antigone, a woman without citizenship.

« Antigone personnifie l’espoir face à la dévastation de la guerre » (Avril 191).

He tells Mario that after « quelque vingt versions…je pense à d’autre choses

qu’au cinéma. À la politique, à l’amitié, à la passion… » (147). His desire to

create a film on his own terms allows Fabrizio to envision « une société sans

limites…pas de limites dans le laboratoire, pas de limites dans la rue » (147).

Mario’s response to Fabrizio alludes to a more conservative approach:

« concentre ton énergie dans l’écriture….Pense limites » (147). However

Fabrizio continues to pursue his creative desires without barriers, limits. For

Fabrizio, cinematic freedom means « aucune barrière physique ou morale, je

me suis étendu de tout mon corps sur les autres » (147). The key words in the

preceding quotation are les autres a reference to a horizon without limits. As

Fabrizio asserts « je ne me limite pas à mon sang, ni à ma langue, ni à un

drapeau…je suis un roc qu’aucune vague n’effritera. Ce trop ne s’associe pas à

un territoire ou, pire, à un peuple » (148). During this conversation with Mario,

Fabrizio brings up the subject of Éros, a reference to the Greek god of love.

Eros defines an individual’s experience of sexual yearning or desire. However

Eros may also be understood as a symbol of an individual’s connection to their

passions and their creative spirit. It is how I read Eros in D’Alfonso, as desire

for creative freedom. Nevertheless, Mario’s vision of Éros may be read as a

sexual concept, one that is disillusioned:

Éros me paraît laid...j’attends impatiemment le jour où nous vivrons

d’un amour éthique, d’un amour durable, d’un amour qui ne perd

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jamais de vue la réalité de la foi. Je veux croire à l’abandon absolu, à

l’oubli de tout…mais je n’arrive pas à croire à l’Éros qui naît de la

promiscuité et de l’adultère…comment peut-on croire que le corps

puisse parler si l’âme n’y est pas? (150-151).

Mario’s vision of an ethical, untainted love is marred by Fabrizio’s confession

of his indiscretion with Léah. Yet Mario’s continued interest in Fabrizio

suggests he forgives his friend and symbolically illustrates his desire to protect

spaces between the dominant culture and its Other cultures: « Nous nous

regardons amicalement, avec dans les yeux ce sourire complice d’acteurs épris

» (155). Fabrizio’s profound attachment to his friend Mario, a sign of

Fabrizio’s attachment to the Québec culture is obvious when he says:

« Mario, tes yeux sont mes huiles et musiques » (155). This sharing unites

these men at a time that should divide them. Thus their intimate Barthesian

relation privilégiée holds more value than the black mark of infidelity created

by Fabrizio’s affair with Léah.

Fabrizio’s desire for artistic freedom is another way in which he

validates his self-hood as creative and performative.

Pour capter la sacralité fuyante des corps et des objets devant nous, il

faudra nous abandonner totalement….Surtout ne bougez pas, respirez

lentement, pleinement, et écoutez cette lumière surgir des iris de la vie

(155).

This notion of complete abandon that Fabrizio speaks of may be read as his

desire for complete creative freedom. I read this desire for creative freedom

through Fabrizio’s innate connection to Antigone, the focal character of his

film. Antigone is an integral ingredient in how D’Alfonso constructs

Fabrizio’s identity, linking his self-esteem to his ability to freely explore his

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creative desires. Antigone is a woman who is prepared to sacrifice her life to

give her brother a proper burial, a woman who symbolizes the ethical love

Mario speaks of. By focusing on a film about Antigone, Fabrizio lives outside

labels that barricade his creative spirit. When his film is rejected because it is

not about immigration, he does not give in and re-write a script that will

provide him with the recognition and accolades of producers. Fabrizio is

determined to get his film produced on his terms:

Je ne cherche pas à être différent. Je cherche à être moi-même. La

différence n’a de sens que si elle provient de l’essence de la personne.

Les idées qui créent un film doivent être foncièrement objectivées.

Autrement dit, elles doivent être extirpées de leur contexte émotionnel

(163).

I understand Fabrizio’s contexte émotionnel as his desire to explore Eros, his

creative desires as an exploration of his deepest passions.

This exploration of creative desire in Avril is also illustrated in

D’Alfonso’s work En Italiques: Réflexions sur l’ethnicité published in 2000.

In this work, D’Alfonso asks the following question in his opening chapter: «

Serait-il possible que identité veuille dire ‘la nature essentielle de

l’inconscient? » (15). I would answer yes because individual identity (not

collective identity) is shaped through personal, creative experiences. One

person’s response and connectivity with his or her cultural community is

dependent on the person’s sense of self-esteem and desire for acceptance

and/or admiration of Others. Self-esteem, however, develops in large part

through an individual’s sense of belonging in specific cultural spaces.

D’Alfonso addresses his selfhood and identity as a pluricultural ethos (En

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italiques 143). I understand this pluricultural ethos as creative desire or

creative connectivity between different cultures and languages. D’Alfonso

refers to himself as “Abruzzese/Molisano/Canadian/Italian/European/North

American” because he cannot choose between his various cultural selves. This

hyphenated breakdown of D’Alfonso’s identity resembles Anzaldúa’s

multisubjectivity. D’Alfonso does not separate his Canadian self from French

and English because his connection to cultures is actually three-fold and

therefore it cannot be polarized. This idea surfaces in Avril when Fabrizio

speaks of his attachment to Montréal:

Enfant tripartite, j’aligne mes trois visions différentes sur la même

ville. Que dire du fantasme nationaliste qui prétend que tous et chacun

dans une région du monde sont issus d’une même race (sic), détentrice

d’une même et unique vision de la réalité sociale, culturelle et politique

(D’Alfonso, Avril 180).

In D’Alfonso’s vision of space « il n’est plus seulement question de la pureté

de la culture ou de la perte de la culture » (En italiques 21). The movement

between dominant and other cultures that takes place in regional cosmopolitan

spaces such as Montréal cannot remain static because culture cannot be

contained. Hybrid spaces of cultural movement are complex models inside

national cultural contexts. However there is always a regional thread inside

any national context of identity and inside these regional threads identity is

understood as the coming together of differences, not the coming together of

same-ness. « L’hybride est un lieu de contestation quand il force les catégories

et nous oblige à redéfinir les critères de la beauté et du savoir » (Simon,

Hybridité culturelle 28). In the work of D’Alfonso (even Laferrère) notions of

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beauty and knowledge are aligned with Simon’s vision of hybridity as a space

which contests categories of sameness and validates difference. The

connection between space and beauty, space and knowledge, are obvious in

the way Fabrizio embraces Montréal’s cosmopolitan identity.

Montréal aux regards divers…plein de larmes, au sourire arrogant, ville

prétentieuse. Ma ville natale qui parfois m’est plus étrangère que

Rome, ou Paris, ou Francfort, ou Mexico (D’Alfonsi, Avril 180).

Even if Fabrizio is born in Montréal, he finds alliances and even allegiances in

Other cities as well. Like Laferrière, space inhabits him long after he leaves

particular spaces. Thus these writers value the notion of how individuals

inhabit space. Their vision of space is not limited to cultural origins. While

neither D’Alfonso nor Laferrière challenges the value of cultural origins, each

one defends (in different ways) the importance of connectivity between

cultures. Moreover in D’Alfonso’s other works, he addresses subjectivity as a

concept anchored to one’s level of attachment to regional space(s) one

occupies in a present context. « Je suis chez moi là où je me sens bien dans ma

peau, partout et nulle part à la fois » (D’Alfonso, Un vendredi 37).

Thus validation of self-hood is an integral aspect in D’Alfonso’s

writing and in his vision of identity. As he says, « le respect d’autrui dépend de

la dignité de soi » (109). The greatest challenge in the construction of self-

hood is the need to feel loved and admired by Others. Moreover it is difficult

to live with one’s sense of individuality when that individuality continually

shifts between different cultural and linguistic codes. I believe how individuals

love themselves largely depends on how they engage inside public and private

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spaces of culture(s) and language(s). In D’Alfonso’s words “[s]ono quello che

sono. I am what I am. A difference imposed on me by history. [It is a] way of

living up to the standards imposed on myself by myself” (The Other Shore

117). Individuals like D’Alfonso negotiate identity as an intimate zone thus

inside Barthesian zones of relation privilégiée. He therefore projects Beck’s

model of the essential and social self because his work draws inspiration from

within and from an outside context of socially accepted standards, ones

dictated by different cultural space(s). D’Alfonso reacts to outside cultural

pressures differently than Laferrière or Rodriguez. His discourse does not

address hybrid subjectivity through differences of skin color. This is not an

issue that touches D’Alfonso’s understanding of cultural identity because his

physical appearance does not visibly separate him from white mainstream

culture as explicitly as Laferrière or Rodriguez. However I read his negotiation

between cultures as a by-product of colonial desire(s) in two contexts: French

Canadian and Italian, English and French Canadian.

An individual’s birthplace will always play a role in identity

negotiation. However in today’s globalized economic and cultural markets, the

concept of a pure nation, a pure culture, a pure race, or even for that matter

heterosexually dominated cultural codes, is in my opinion, a dated notion.

Rodriguez’s process of assimilation and his closeted homosexuality are time

and space specific. Therefore his personal story does not clearly promote the

idea of the creative connectivity between cultural and linguistic codes I wish

to promote in this thesis. However his desire for hybridized identification,

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albeit latent in many instances, illustrates his negotiation between different

spaces. His confrontation of political issues such as bilingual education and

affirmative action highlight the climate in which Rodriguez had to negotiate

his place as an American citizen.

D’Alfonso’s discussions about such political climates and nationhood

are addressed differently in his work. This story takes place during a period in

Québec when the province is fighting hard to maintain its distinct identity, one

apart from an English Canadian context. It is interesting to note that Fabrizio’s

vision of nation tells another story. He suggests that « il n’y a plus de pureté

racial, il n’y a que des impuretés qui permettent d’accroître la connaissance de

soi, pour ensuite créer une harmonie universelle » (Avril 22). D’Alfonso’s

message below illustrates his position on the connection between culture and

nation.

Si je me suis longtemps senti mal dans ma peau – et sans doute le serai-

je jusqu’à la fin de mes jours – c’est que ma condition sociale m’a

transmis des conditionnements historiques particuliers que je porte en

moi, malgré moi….Ce qui me fascine…le fait qu’une culture sans

nation soit une culture faible (En italiques 16).

In the preceding quotation, D’Alfonso’s reference to the conditionnements

historiques particuliers que je porte en moi illustrates the notion that one’s

identity can bear a direct correlation to one’s inner state of mind, what he later

refers to as l’inconscient. Speaking in this way D’Alfonso taps into a state of

extended consciousness illustrating that his past is an integral part of how he

reads his present and future. The idea of culture and nation as one concept no

longer fit D’Alfonso’s vision of subjectivity. He must continually juggle

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notions of cultural identity inside an Italian and French Canadian frame,

insisting on the relevance of ancestral history.

As in Hoffman’s story, in D’Alfonso’s narrative there are undertones of

an ethical responsibility. There is therefore a symbolic importance attached to

Fabrizio’s narration of his parents’ story before coming to Canada. Moreover,

living in Québec means that Fabrizio (like D’Alfonso) is unwittingly caught

negotiating his subjectivity between the French and English cultures. Thus, for

Fabrizio, growing up in Montreal amidst English and French cultural and

linguistic divides means that he must negotiate identity between these

dominant cultures. However as a white immigrant, he negotiates mobility

between such spaces differently therefore more fluidly than Laferrière or

Rodriguez. Rodriguez needs to Americanize his identity while Laferrière

parodies the black man. Both techniques may be read as tools of empowerment

in how these men negotiate their masculine subjectivity between spaces. Such

techniques are not present in D’Alfonso’s work. His vision of hybrid

subjectivity and his negotiation of self-hood are not complicated by issues of

color.

For visibly different writers such as Laferrière and Rodriguez, color

lines create tougher challenges, and these challenges surface in varying

degrees in their writing. Cultural pride and linguistic rights during this period

in Québec in the 1960s are shaped and dictated inside a dominant white

national Canadian political and cultural environment. The immigrant presence

was not always viewed positively by nationalists who advocated for a pure

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Québécois French-speaking nation. I believe this has played a role in how

immigrants define themselves inside a hybrid context, differently in Montréal

than in other urban cities in Canada because immigrants in Montréal are

continually negotiating agency and voice between English and French

Canadians. The battle for education in French in schools became a battle in

other arenas as well. For writers like D’Alfonso, achieving literary success was

possible only in one of two ways:

If you wrote in French and did not belong to the Modernité group, or if

you wrote in English and did not belong to the regional “in-power”

group, you simply did not stand a chance of ever seeing your work in

print….You were left out in the cold for no other reason than for being

alone. You had to belong (D’Alfonso qtd. in Pivato, Contrasts 217-

218).

While the Québécois were fighting for recognition inside dominant English

Canada, immigrants in Montréal were also facing similar struggles, however

their fight was somewhere between English and French. Where the immigrant

struggle is more challenging, especially in the 1960s, is in defining and

asserting differences positively inside a space defined by white French

patriotism and white English dominance.

L’hybridité appartient pleinement à la mouvance de la pensée

postmoderne dans la mesure où celle-ci n’imagine plus le monde

progressant vers un seul idéal de vérité universelle, mais reconnaît une

multiplicité des savoirs prenant des configurations diverses et variées

(Simon, Hybridité culturelle 27).

Within this politically charged social arena, I believe that Italian immigrants

paved the way for a hybrid climate in Montréal today. Italians like D’Alfonso

define themselves through three national contexts: English Canada, French

Canada and Italy. What seems obvious is the rather unique cultural climate in

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Montréal, differently hybrid in nature than other Canadian cities because

immigrants are continuously challenged to negotiate selfhood between two

dominant cultures. Other Italian writers like Filippo Salvatore feel a sense of

fascination and connection to the Québécois culture and “geographical

milieu”, however they are always conscious that the “historical vision of

Québec that the intelligentsia and the Péquistes offer” does not mark their

selfhood in the same way (qtd. in Pivato, Echo 225). Salvatore understand his

“sensitivity is fundamentally Mediterranean and Southern” (225). However

D’Alfonso recognizes that “if Italian writers in Canada and Quebec want to

leave their indelible traces on our culture, they must study and absorb Italian

literary tradition as well as English and French” (qtd. in Pivato, Contrasts

220). D’Alfonso reminds us of the co-dependent relationship of cultures, of

people. “Beauty is not inborn. It is the fruit of learning. Beauty has to be

taught” (221). This notion of beauty D’Alfonso speaks of validates the need

for connectivity between cultures and the more hybrid vision of subjectivity

that I promote in this thesis.

CONCLUSION

According to Susan Friedman, “the important unit is never…the

isolated human ... but the presence and recognition of another consciousness

(qtd. in Eakin 80). For Laferrière, that consciousness comes from his ability to

laugh at himself. He refers to the « étalage sexuel » in his texts as « le

dictateur du plaisir » (Laferrière, Je suis fatigué 54). He refuses the label

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« Noir…[ou] immigrant » (53). Moreover, by embracing Haiti, Canada and the

United States as one America, Laferrière blurs geographic boundaries and

nationalist rhetoric that would force him to choose one country over another.

In his words, « Qui suis-je? » can only be defined by « Où suis-je? » (Je suis

fatigué 82). He aligns himself regionally with three cities: Montreal, Miami

and Port-au-Prince. Contrarily, Rodriguez wonders how “the child of

immigrant parents is supposed to perch on a hyphen, taking only the dose of

America he needs to advance in America” (Day of Obligation 159). In an

interview with Claudia Milian Arias, Rodriguez admits his “contradiction–the

gringo [he] became, the Mexican [he] remain[s]”.

I read Laferrière’s parody of black and white relationships as an illicit

or forbidden affair. It may be understood as an involuntary representation of

hybridity however it is nevertheless a validation of connectivity between

dominant and other groups. D’Alfonso’s writing promotes a more open

argument in favour of relationships and ideas outside dominant ideologies.

Rodriguez, as hard as he tries to fit into the skin of American selfhood cannot

escape his cultural voice as Other. We live in a society inundated by labels

where choice is sometimes pre-determined. What we wear, what we eat, what

we drive, where we work, etc., every aspect of who we are, is dictated by

trends and advertisers. There is nothing we do that is untouched by the far-

reaching hand of local, national, and international advertisers. With the

internet, this influence is impossible to escape. Before we can become

individuals, we are labelled: man, woman, rich, poor, young, old, Black,

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White, Catholic, Muslim, French, English, etc. Inside such categorization, our

greatest challenges are perhaps in how we choose intimate connections, a

Barthesian relation privilégiée with those who are most unlike us! This

passage of connectivity or negotiation for possible connectivity inside zones of

difference is not an easy one but as Barthes points out, it is not necessary to

live in binary terms of success or failure.

Le monde soumet toute entreprise à une alternative; celle de la réussite

ou de l’échec, de la victoire, ou de la défaite. Je proteste d’une autre

logique : je suis à la fois contradictoirement heureux et malheureux :

réussir ou échouer…ce qui m’anime, sourdement et obstinément, n’est

point tactique: j’accepte et j’affirme, hors du vrai et du faux, hors du

réussi ou du raté…je n’en sors ni vainqueur ni vaincu (Fragments d’un

discours amoureux 29-30).

In the works of Rodriguez, Laferrière and D’Alfonso, different visions of

connectivity between cultures validate the notion of hybrid subjectivities and a

negotiation of passages between dominant and other cultures. It is a

negotiation fraught with tensions, challenges, gains and losses. It is however,

as Barthes reminds us, not so important if such negotiations fail or succeed.

What is important, even necessary, is that individuals continue to embrace

these ambivalent zones because « le vrai lieu d’originalité n’est ni l’autre ni

moi, mais notre relation elle-même. C’est l’originalité de la relation qu’il faut

conquérir…lorsque la relation est originale, le stéréotype est ébranlé, dépassé,

évacué » (44-45). The preceding quotation appears again in this chapter as an

important reminder of difference (s). This is perhaps the most important

common thread in the works of Rodriguez, Laferrière and D’Alfonso. Their

writing styles illustrate a wish to break free from stereotypes that dictate or

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control their particular negotiation of identity, or any stereotypes that rob them

of an authentic foundation of self-esteem and ontogenetic security.

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CHAPTER THREE

Linguistic Code-switching and Non-translation

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an

artist do anything if he's happy? Would he

ever want to do anything? What is art,

after all, but a protest against the horrible

inclemency of life?

~ Aldous Huxley

By and large, language is a tool for

concealing the truth.

~ George Carlin

The force of desire compelled us to

translate imagination into action ... into

the manic estatic [sic] tongue of love.

~ Patti Smith

Just as music is an art form that communicates messages emotionally

through its different genres, languages are also artistic expressions of

communication. As an art form, code-switching between languages, without

translation, is a particularly innovative and creative artistic tool. Within my list

of works selected, Gloria Anzaldúa and Hiromi Goto most effectively employ

linguistic code-switching artistically in their works. They also challenge and

subvert the power of the dominant centre through their use of untranslated

words and passages. Therefore, they are the focus of this chapter. I am

interested in contrasting Anzaldứa’s autohistoria Borderlands/La Frontera

with Goto’s work of fiction Chorus of Mushrooms for the following reasons:

First, in spite of differences of sexuality, ethnicity, culture and citizenship, the

two writers share an affirmative view of linguistic hybridity. Second, to

different degrees, these works contest the hegemony of language through

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code-switching. I read linguistic hybridization in both works as a form of

connectivity between people, a game of wit and fencing between languages

and cultures. It is as much about respect and love for more than one language

and one culture as it is about an intellectually creative challenge for writer and

reader. In these works, the interaction of un-translated minority languages with

majority languages may be read first and foremost as a polemical argument

against “assimilation to the dominant norm, to the language of hegemony,

English” (Cutter 3). However, such linguistic code-switching may also be read

as a celebration of the hybrid voice and connectivity between cultures. Since

code-switching between languages can create bridges or gaps in how readers

engage in the meaning-making process, it is a creative jeu de compréhension

of sorts, a dynamic power play between meaning and intention that is not

always clear.

I understand linguistic code-switching as a creative tool of

connectivity: it instills interest, curiosity and perhaps even desire for the Other

language and Other culture. I also view it is a sort of linguistic foreplay in that

it teases the meaning-making process by creating and instilling desire for

Other language(s). “Getting meaning right” is a way “to read desire”

(Sommer 70). Moreover, I view this linguistic foreplay as a necessary tool of

expression for writers of color such as Goto and Anzaldúa whose process of

identity negotiation is particularly challenging linguistically and culturally.

Their hybrid position of movement is best understood through James

Clifford’s intercultural identity question, “Where are you between?” rather

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than “Where are you from?” or where will you end up. It is a space “more or

less permanently in transit” between cultural and/or linguistic spaces (Clifford,

Traveling Cultures 109). Linguistic foreplay or code-switching in Anzaldúa’s

and Goto’s works illustrates each writer’s use of, and attachment to, her

language of origin alongside the dominant English. The dynamic between and

within languages, each writer’s system of multiple meanings embodies

Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “exotopy…the most powerful level of

understanding,” where one culture and one language can only be understood

through their internal and “external aspect’ to another culture” and another

language (Todorov 109). In Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s works, the point where

when one language is interrupted and an Other language is uttered is not

always easily understood. In some instances, these writers avoid direct

translations of Other words and sentences. This can create a gap between the

reader’s understanding and the writer’s intention. The ability of readers to

decipher linguistic codes and interpret them is dependent on their knowledge

of the dominant and peripheral language(s).

If unilingual readers do not seek translation, they remain more-or-less

excluded from the creative dynamics at play. The dialogue is always

Bakhtinian because speech is about heteroglossia therefore polyphonic and

many-voiced. “This is why the unique speech experience of each individual is

shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with others’

individual utterances” (Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays 89).

While a Bakhtinian code-switching exists inside all language, a more complex

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version of code-switching occurs in those instances when it occurs between

different languages. Nuanced meanings are privileged over literal translation.

In such instances, reader and writer engage in a Barthesian relation privilégiée

(outside the sphere of a group). The communication is more intimate because

it privileges the “value of beauty … as culturally specific” (Sommer 50) while

the meaning-making process simultaneously brings together “people who live

in two or more languages” (34). Such an exchange would not be effective in a

group dynamic, say in business or in politics unless all parties could fluently

code-switch between languages. This form of code-switching between two

people creates a “bristl[ing tone] when the game changes codes and shifts

them to outside positions” (36). Interchangeable outside positions encourage a

better understanding of differences promoting more respectful relationships

between people.

In Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s works, linguistic hybridity is explored

primarily as a polemical tool. Meaning-making and intention are at times

deliberately marred by un-translated sections. Neither writer assumes that

readers can code-switch. Thus there is a deliberate focus on blocking (to some

degree) the meaning-making process of readers who speak the dominant

language but not the Other language(s). In my opinion, readers can benefit

from such code-switching techniques as it can motivate them to explore a

more intimate, unchartered promenade or engagement with Other languages.

Robert Frost’s message of taking the road less traveled fits this concept of the

unchartered promenade I speak of. As well, as Sommer points out, “a little

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irritation … just enough to get a rise out of people who think difference is an

obstacle to level and leave behind – is good for liberal democracy” (36). Un-

translated linguistic hybridity in such written works encourages readers to read

differently. While it may reduce readership because the process making-

meaning is more complicated, I believe that encouraging such hybrid

processes of meaning-making can be valuable. By seeking meaning outside

dominant linguistic and cultural codes, writers such as Goto and Anzaldúa

wish to “deliberately distort or appropriate the source-language ... to suit ...

political or cultural” agendas (De Lotbinière-Harwood 98). They choose how

and when (non)translation occurs. In this way, they decide “what ideological

stances and cultural values [they] ... consciously or not, want to foreground or

mute” (100-101).

I understand their process of (non)transation as “the transformation of

displeasure into pleasure … [where] hard work … [is] not … a matter of

inspiration … but rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement”

(Sommer 120). While Goto’s approach to how this transformation takes place

is less polemical than Anzaldúa’s, Goto’s writing (just as Anzaldúa’s) defends

my position in this thesis that Other languages (and cultures) deserve a more

authentic and prominent voice in literary works. Therefore like Clifford’s

ethnographer, these writers travel between cultures, exploring identity

construction in “mixed, relational, and inventive” terms (Clifford, Predicament

of Culture 10). As Sherry Simon puts it, « c’est dans et par l’étrangeté que se

construit l’identité » (Simon, Trafic des langues 46). By choosing the less

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traveled path of non-translation in their works, Anzaldúa and Goto take an

important stand in favour of code-switching which implicates the reader in a

pedagogical process of translation. In such a process, there is creative

connectivity because host and adopted citizens communicate, listen to, and

understand each other more intimately.

To appreciate the qualities of such a meaning-making process and

connectivity between cultures, in this chapter I focus on three aspects of

linguistically hybrid dialogues present in both works: i) the possible gains

and/or losses unilingual dominant language readers face when they are

confronted by Other un-translated languages in English works; ii) non-

translation and code-switching as a contestation of the hegemony of the

English language voice in North American life stories; and iii) the desire

between characters that is also a metaphor of desire for Other languages and

Other cultures.v I focus on how a linguistically hybridized narration

contextualizes travel between languages and how code-switching is ultimately

a tool of connectivity between people, languages, and cultures. To solidify

points of connectivity rather than focus on how hybridization can isolate,

separate, and even alienate people from the dominant centers of society, I am

especially indebted to the following works: Chantal Zabus’s The African

Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel

(1991), Sherry Simon’s Le Trafic des Langues (1994), Catherine Leclerc’s

Ph.D. dissertation « Des langues en partage? Cohabitation du français et de

l’anglais en littérature contemporaine » (2004) and Doris Sommer’s Bilingual

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Aesthetics (2004). Roland Barthes’ vision of la relation privilégiée and

jouissance is nestled between these works framing my view of linguistic and

cultural code-switching as manifestations of desire for the Other.

Chantal Zabus

Zabus’ focus on linguistic code-switching illustrates the un-

transferability of culturally specific linguistic expression. In her study, she

examines West African linguistic patterns to deconstruct dominant and

authoritarian inscriptions of cultural and linguistic signs, to reveal how the

dominant English language is affected by, or transformed as a result of, an

interaction with Other languages. There is a similar deconstruction of

dominant and authoritarian cultural and linguistic signs that is of great value in

Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s use of linguistic hybridity. The focus of Zabus’ work in

the The African Palimpsest is on Third World Languages, cultural codes of

cross-fertilization and métissage. Like the method of indigenization spoken of

by Zabus which aims at “naming and identifying the gap between mother

tongue and other tongue without necessarily bridging it…without necessarily

resorting to translation” Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s code-switching techniques are

also the “site of the pull between mother tongue and other tongue” (Zabus 8).

Goto’s protagonist, Murasaki, understands that “when there isn’t one word in

English, it will be there in Japanese” (Goto 54). In Anzaldúa, the line between

mother tongue and other tongue(s) collapses: “there is no one Chicano

language just as there is no one Chicano experience” (Anzaldúa 80). There is

however one important point in my focus on these works that is not addressed

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in Zabus’ work on West African code-switching. In Zabus, the process of

reading is understood as superimposed and layered. While code-switching

between cultural codes remains layered, there is also an adjacent or connective

meaning-making process that occurs in Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s works. The

dominant language sits beside an un-translated Other language, thus creating a

more challenging process of interpretation and meaning-making.

Catherine Leclerc

In Leclerc’s dissertation which focuses on the cohabitation of French

and English in contemporary literature, she defends the place of minority

languages. She addresses the viability and consequences of co-lingual texts

that share an equal, or near equal amount of narration in French and English.

Her position of how languages can and perhaps should co-exist in literary

works is an important one.

Fragmentant l’unité fictive à l’enseigne de laquelle logent les langues

nationales, les revendications des minorités linguistiques ont contribué

à faire du plurilinguisme le phénomène incontournable qu’il est en voie

de devenir dans la pensée contemporaine (Leclerc 2).

Leclerc views the future role of minority languages in contemporary literature

as one of value. The writers I focus on in this chapter illustrate a natural desire

to linguistically and culturally code-switch. Although Leclerc’s point on the

viability and consequence of a hybrid narration addresses the cohabitation of

Engish and French, her defence of this cohabitation lends itself well to how I

frame and defend code-switching in Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s works.

Moreover, I agree with Leclerc’s claim that « la littérature pourrait s’avérer

riche d’enseignement quant aux types de rapport entre les langues susceptible

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de se développer à la faveur de ce climat doublement favorable au

plurilinguisme » (3). There is a strong pedagogical intent behind the

plurilinguisme she speaks of. For instance, there is a didactic purpose to how

Anzaldúa switches between “anglicisms or pochismos...anglicized Mexican ...

[a language] with an accent characteristic of North Americans ... distort[ed]

and reconstruct[ed] ... according to the influence of English” (Anzaldúa 78).

The didactic value comes from an understanding of how slang can be “a

language of rebellion” (78). Switching between different linguistic codes of

slang signals different forms of linguistic rebellion Anzaldúa engages in. Her

usage of slang establishes a strong polemical stance against literal translations

as they will fail in providing accurate, intimate meaning(s). The use of slang

also illustrates how cultural codes exist within the same linguistic references.

Language and culture cannot be understood exclusively of each other. Thus

Anzaldúa’s “ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity” because as she

points out

until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having

always to translate, while I still have to speak Spanglish, and as long as

I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them

accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate” (81).

This legitimacy that Anzaldúa wishes is also a by-product of historical,

political, and cultural events. She legitimizes her hybrid voice through un-

translated code-switching techniques. For instance, she validates her intimate

connection to Mexican spaces by expressing this connection differently in

English and in Spanish.

This land was Mexican once,

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was Indian always

and is

And will be again (25).

Yo soy un Puente tendido

Del mundo gabacho al del mojado.

Lo pasado me estira pa’trás

Yo lo presente pa’ ‘delante,

Que la Virgen de Guadalupe me cuide

Ay ay ay, soy mexicana de este lado (25).

Translated by Carlos Jiminez as:

I am the lying bridge

From the foreigner to the wet back worlds

The past pulls me backwards

And the present forward,

Guadalupe virgin watch for me (take care of me)

Ay ay ay, I’m Mexican from this side.

The English message is somewhat polemical in its wish to reoccupy lands

once Mexican and Indian, now the American states of: “Texas, New Mexico,

Arizona, Colorado and California” (Anzaldúa 29). However the Spanish

reference noted above with its English translation illustrates Anzaldúa’s

sentimental, more intimate voice, one she reserves for Spanish readers.

Regardless of why she code-switches, Anzaldúa insists on being heard through

the different codes (cultural and linguistic) that shape her identity. I also

understand her code-switching style as a pedagogical process. The reader

enters a didactic journey when reading Anzaldúa. She leads readers into a

pedagogical process to “change the disciplines … the genres … how people

look at a poem, at theory” (232-233). Anzaldúa writes as a teacher would, to

educate readers to learn about and understand her Other worlds. In the spaces

she moves between “borders are transgressed constantly” (233). These border

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spaces are fraught with many tensions for her and for others, tensions that are

sometimes difficult to reconcile. For instance, Anzaldúa refers to Chicano

Spanish as something equivalent to “linguistic terrorism” an

“illegitimate…bastard language” (80). The Chicanos, “internalize how …

language has been used against … [them] by the dominant culture” creating a

vicious cycle whereby Chicanos use their “language differences against each

other” (80). As she points out, linguistic conflicts must be resolved inside a

community before they can be addressed and repaired with other communities.

Anzaldúa embraces language(s). This is a necessary tool in how she respects

herself while recognizing and legitimizing Other languages. As Leclerc notes,

« [e]n mobilisant plus d’une langue à titre de véhicule narratif, le texte

colingue – sans abandonner tout à fait la notion de langue titélaire – la fragilise

néanmoins » (Leclerc 318). Anzaldúa’s movement between languages

sometimes creates gaps in how the English reader understands her words.

While the English reader never misses any important points Anzaldúa wishes

to make, s/he is not always actively involved in Anzaldúa’s meaning-making

process. I view this exclusion as Anzaldúa’s desire to force the English reader

into a pedagogical exercise. Engaging meaningfully with Other cultures means

knowing Other languages.

Immigrant cultures will influence (in varying degrees) dominant

cultures, therefore a reciprocal relationship between host and immigrant can

(re)shape our vision of connectivity between cultures as a key aspect of how

urban centers in North America and elsewhere function within hybridized

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frames of identification. I would then argue that we can engage with Other

cultures and languages on a deeper level, more openly if we have the ability to

code-switch between languages. As Zabus points out, “culture change always

involves language change” (ii). Leclerc also speaks of this relational

movement between culture and language by referring to code-switching as a

consequence of cultural diversity. The value of such movement in literature is

seen as Leclerc points out in how « le colinguisme prend le plurilinguisme

pour point de départ ... il rend possible la découverte d’affinités transversales

entre des textes auxquels le découpage linguistique des littératures assigne des

attaches différentes » (Leclerc 321). I would even suggest that code-switching

should be understood as a fiduciary/ethical responsibility. We cannot

intimately engage with language(s) without having a cultural understanding of

that language just as we cannot engage intimately with culture without

speaking the language.

Sherry Simon

Just as Leclerc’s thesis draws its inspiration from Simon’s work on

plurilingualism, Simon’s understanding of hybridity in Quebec literature has

inspired my illustration of linguistic hybridization in two ways: i) as a specific

social and linguistic other code within an existing hierarchical social and

linguistic structure; and ii) as a hybrid-multi-lingual narration or dialogue. The

effects of translation Simon explores are particularly important in my

perceptions of code-switching and non translation narration techniques. If a

reader understands more than one language in a meaningful way then such

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slips as « les mots déguisés, les faux amis, les traductions littérales » will be

better understood in their nuanced meanings (Simon, Trafic des langues 44).

Simon’s example of Jean Le Moyne (best known for his publication

Convergences in 1961) is a particularly important one in understanding the

importance of non translation. Le Moyne is an insightful example because he

openly embraced his knowledge of English, his Other language. As he notes in

his work Convergences: “I want to keep my French heritage, but it is just as

important for me to keep my English chattels and to go to the limit of my

American gift of invention.” This example also validates movement between

languages in literary readings.

En lisant son auteur américain préféré Henry James, Le Moyne se rend

compte qu’il ne traduit plus, qu’il assimile en d’autres mots cette

littérature de façon non médiatisée. Cette prise de conscience est

dramatique…et révèle le fait que la réalité “américaine” est

irrévocablement de langue anglaise (45).

The preceding quotation sums up a major point in favor of code-switching

without translation. To respect the cultural context, it makes most sense to

decipher meaning-making inside each language by knowing the language,

rather than through direct translation techniques. Although Simon’s ideas in

Trafic des langues applies to Québec’s changing literary circle since the

1980s, writers such as Anzaldúa and Goto, through their usage of Other non-

translated languages validate Simon’s point that « toute culture conserve son

dynamisme grâce justement aux contacts et aux liaisons qu’elle établit dans

l’ouverture et le dialogue avec une diversité de traditions » (18). Non

translation writing techniques promote this ouverture Simon speaks of. In

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those moments where meaning from one language to another is understood

without translation, the process remains encoded inside cultural references.

This form of understanding is less literal therefore more nuanced in intimate

meaning than translation. This process is significant because readers seek

meaning outside pre-established dominant codes. We can understand this idea

more clearly by looking at Simon’s ideas on translation: « Le but de la

traduction est de renverser les effets de domination culturelle inhérents au

système colonial, d’absorber et de transformer les modèles de la culture

européenne et de les intégrer à la culture indigène » (Simon, Le trafic des

langues 23). I agree with Simon that translation is a necessary process for

readers who do not speak the languages in question. I would nevertheless like

to emphasize that readers who code- switch without seeking literal translations

engage in a more intimate heteroglossic Bakhtinian process of meaning-

making because “languages of various epochs and periods of socio-ideological

life cohabit with one another” (The Dialogic Imagination 291). Thus

knowledge of Other languages is an important process in how we successfully

co-habitate with Others. If this type of process motivates dominant language

speakers to understand and encode meanings by learning Other languages,

then code-switching becomes a valuable pedagogical tool. Such pedagogy

would also lead to a more inclusive addition of minority literature in university

curricula because social/cultural codes often dictate academic choices. While

such code-switching techniques may discourage some readers from such

works, I would argue that these works are a necessary addition to today’s

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literary publications and on our academic shelves. On another equally

important note, Anzaldúa’s hybrid voice mirrors « le pouvoir transgressif du

texte plurilingue [Simon speaks of] …dans sa contestation des frontières

nationales et culturelles, dans sa tentative de mettre en cause le rapport à la

communauté et aux identités collectives » (Hybridité culturelle 27). Anzaldúa

cannot abide socially dictated costumes or cultural dominated customs of

nationhood or any codes that bind her inside one fixed identity. She believes

that it is

[o]ur role to link people with each other – the Blacks with Jews with

Indians with Asians with [W]hites and extraterrestrials. It is to transfer

ideas and information from one culture to another….The mestizo and

the queer exist at this time and point on the evolutionary continuum for

a purpose. We are a blending that proves that all blood is intricately

woven together, and that we are spawned out of similar souls

(Anzaldúa 106-107).

In the preceding quotation, Anzaldua does not capitalize whites. This is an

example of how she contests the dominance of White discourse in cultural and

linguistic politics. Perhaps it is her intention to promote and validate the voice

of Other groups over that of the dominant English White group. Or she may

simply wish to strip the label of white race or nationality of its power. I have

however chosen to capitalize Whites to contest the marginalization of any

groups, dominant or otherwise.

Goto also speaks out against marginalization by code-switching

between Japanese and English. She illustrates how English readers need to

experience gaps in understanding (just as Other cultures do). We can

understand Goto’s refusal to translate certain Japanese words and phrases, as

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an example of the very naturalness of such mis-understanding. « L’entreprise

paradoxale de la non-traduction, en déstabilisant l’autorité de la signature, a

pour effet de déplacer les frontières entre traditions poétiques » (Simon, Trafic

des langues 71). Most of Goto’s play between languages does not oblige

readers to seek translation. I believe that this is a deliberate strategy. She

inserts just enough Japanese to destabilize the English reader’s process of

intimate meaning, leaving the English reader wondering if s/he has missed any

nuanced meaning. However unlike Anzaldúa, Goto’s process of code-

switching does not force the English reader to seek translation, even if it does

create small gaps in his or her understanding of more intimate meanings. For

instance, the following Japanese question: “Wakatte kurera kashira? ” is

followed by an English question: “Can you listen before you hear” (Goto

Chorus 2) The literal translation of the Japanese is: “Would you understand

me? ” I understand this switch between Japanese and English Goto makes as a

validation of code-switching over literal translations. Because Goto fluently

speaks both languages, she has the ability to assign meaning intimately as she

code-switches between the two languages. However a unilingual English

speaker who relies on literal translation would lose the nuanced beauty of

shifting between the cultural codes of meaning in language. I also link Goto’s

language strategy to Simon’s reference of cultural expressions.

Les solutions “aux colles” de la traduction ne sont pas toujours à

chercher dans les dictionnaires : elles se trouvent plutôt dans une

analyse de l’état des relations entre les groupes…et leurs expressions

culturelles (55).

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An intimate understanding between cultures occurs when there is an effective

process of communication. Therefore knowledge of Other languages can be

understood as an effective tool to encourage code-switching and/or hybridized

processes of meaning-making. My understanding of Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s

hybrid writing strategies interfaces particularly well with Simon’s description

of Montreal’s population and landscape in Hybridité culturelle. Montreal

could easily be showcased as an example of a hybrid project. It is a city in

continual evolution and movement between cultural and linguistic codes.

Simon’s example of Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood assigns a unique

value to this neighborhood’s diverse and changing cultural makeup.

…l’hybridité se vit dans le Mile-End de façon intense, visible et

consciente….Le Mile End est depuis toujours un espace marginal où

les migrants de tout genre se reconnaissent (Simon, Hybridité culturelle

21).

Today this Mile End neighborhood may not have the same hybrid population it

once did. Nevertheless it is an interesting model of hybridity, visible in the

way this neighborhood came together at one point to celebrate le Saint-Jean-

Baptiste (Québec’s national holiday). Unlike the musical festivities I am

familiar with on the Plains of Abraham in Québec City where Québec artists

belt out francophone beats to create solidarity and pride in being Québécois, in

Montreal’s Mile End, the musical ambiance begins with

[les] groups de danse folklorique…[et] plus tard une musique plus

vivante: le rai algérien, les sambas brésiliennes, le soukus africain.

C’est au son de ces musiques du monde que la foule célèbre la fête

nationale du Québec (18).

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There is great value in holding on to traditional music and local customs.

However what I respect in the vision of Montréal’s Mile End neighborhood

that Simon shares with readers is how a national holiday has become a

harmonized sharing between dominant and Other music to create a hybrid

vibe. As Simon points out, it has become « la fête de ceux et celles qui veulent

célébrer un Québec ouvert aux influences culturelles les plus diverses » (18).

As I understand it, it would be of even greater value to have such festivities

alongside more traditional ones as a way to acknowledge the importance of

past cultural codes and new evolving markers of hybridized cultures.

Such celebration between cultural codes is an important aspect of how

Goto describes her protagonist Naoe, a Japanese woman in her 80s who

chooses to actively participate in the Calgary Stampede as a bull rider.

Moreover Naoe’s relationship with an Albertan cowboy she names Tengu who

speaks Japanese completes the image of a hybridized couple. Simon’s

descriptions of St. Jean festivities in the Mile End neighborhood corresponds

with my reading of Naoe and Tengu as a symbolic coming together of

different cultures. Moreover, Naoe’s entry as a bull rider in her 80s illustrates

her desire to embrace Other cultural traditions thus proving that creative

connectivity is possible at any age! This vision of an old woman is not as far-

fetched as it seems. On her blog, Phyllis Sues who turns 90 on April 4, 2013,

tells readers how she starts her own fashion label at 50, becomes a musician

and learns French and Italian in her 70s, takes tango and trapeze classes at 80

and takes up hot yoga at 85. So in her words “if you think you’re old, think

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again.” Such stories may be exceptional however they motivate people to step

outside accepted norms of thinking that negatively age people. Thus Goto’s

depiction of Naoe is more than plausible. I would argue that such examples

illustrate more daring forms of transgressed Barthesian desire and more

playful zones of cultural jouissance.

Doris Sommer

This cultural jouissance I speak of Goto also expresses through

storytelling. She thus illustrates the importance of oral tradition as another

aspect of one’s creative journey. I frame the narrative techniques in Goto’s and

in Anzaldúa’s writing along with their particular process of hybridized

identification inside Doris Sommer’s work in Bilingual Aesthetics, subtitled A

Sentimental Journey of bilingualism and code-switching. Her ideas favour

connectivity between cultures. Sommer’s work focuses on an Americanized

vision of diglossia or bilingualism. In the following quotation, Zabus points

out how minority languages do not share the same position of prestige as

dominant languages (such as English and French) in public spaces.

A situation of diglossia is generally understood as one in which the

linguistic functions of communication are distributed in a binary

fashion between a culturally prestigious language with a written

tradition and spoken by a minority, and another language, generally

widely spoken but devoid of prestige (Zabus 13).

This idea of language prestige is also present in Sommer’s writing. However

she looks at prestige and how it is missing for minority languages from another

angle. If “foreign languages are prized in elite education and dismissed for

foreigners” then the notion of prestige is a condition of social and economic

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status more than pride in language(s) (Sommer 7). Thus language acquisition

versus language preservation becomes an issue and a fight inside political,

social, and economic value systems. I choose to look at language

communication of Other languages alongside dominant ones in the same way I

understand dance, music, and art training, as a creative engagement with

oneself and with Others. Like the arts, languages deserve a more prestigious

voice in colleges and university curriculums. Such creative processes of

communication would increase the number of readers able to grasp the

distinction between meaning and intention as they move between languages,

rather than translating from one to another. Such “intellectual stimulation,”

what Sommer refers to as “being on the edge sharpens the wits, flexes

democratic systems, and generally goads creativity” (xvi). Sommer’s vision of

bilingualism as an aesthetic tool complements Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s use of

linguistic hybridity. The fruit of this thesis is recognizable by how value is

assigned to what Sommer’s labels intellectual stimulation. She suggests that

“real authenticity means being more than one,” (xxii). Such writing techniques

also allow readers to become more adept at reading and understanding

different cultural and linguistic codes, question status quo cultural biases, and

ultimately engage actively with Other cultures and Other languages more

meaningfully. Moreover such code-switching techniques encourage readers to

seek meaning intimately outside the constraints of a group dynamic, inside a

Barthesian sphere of relation privilégiée. This level of intimacy has, in my

opinion, a priceless human and even ethical value. As Sommer’s points out,

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being more than one allows people to think “in simultaneous and competing

codes [and it also] trains people in multiple perspectives and unchartered

possibilities” (4). But being more than one is difficult to navigate inside a

group or community-based environment. It is inside the realm of one-on-one

relationships that the notion of hybridized identities can be most respected

because the exchange and the meaning-making process are not open to group

interpretation and cultural politics.

While Sommer situates her understanding of bilingualism within an

American framework, her global defence of what she calls bilingual aesthetics

is pertinent in how I interpret code-switching and connectivity between

languages and cultures in Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s works. These writers engage

with dominant and Other language(s) as a personal tool of expression, and as a

necessary condition of how they dwell between cultures and between

languages. Anzaldúa’s bond with language(s) is a deeply hybrid one. “I cannot

accept the legitimacy of myself….[u]ntil I am free to write bilingually and to

switch codes without having always to translate” (Anzaldúa 81). For Goto’s

protagonist Murasaki, the desire to communicate in Japanese corresponds with

her hunger for intimate exchange.

Even when…[she] was very little. Dad... [was] the man without an

opinion and Mom [was always] hiding behind an adopted

language….Obachan [her grandmother Naoe] took another route,

something more harmonious. [She] showed me that words take form

and live and breathe among us. Language is a living beast. (Goto,

Chorus 98-99).

Anzaldúa’s exploration of language(s) is a more conflicted hybrid process than

Goto’s. “Being caught speaking Spanish at” school for instance meant “three

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licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler” (Anzaldúa 76). Anzaldúa’s greatest

challenge was in trying to understand why she could not speak both Spanish

and English. She did not know how to “tame a wild tongue, train it to be

quiet…bridle and saddle it” (76). Moreover, speaking Chicano Spanish was

seen as another form of betrayal, purists viewed it as “deficient, a mutilation of

Spanish” (77). So from a young age, Anzaldúa learned to speak (eight

languages and dialects) in different tongues with different groups. Her writing

is a coming together of all these tongues. In her creative sphere, she cannot

separate or ignore any of her linguistic voices.

I understand both writers’ use of code-switching as an intimate

validation of their hybrid identities. I view this intimate validation as

jouissance, a release Barthes validates as being more powerful than simply an

orgasmic experience. Sommer’s elaborates upon this distinction Barthes

makes. “[H]ybrid encounters [are] of sexual release … [or] ... jouissance,

translated as bliss because orgasm is too anatomical” (Sommer 58). Moreover,

Barthes’ sphere of la relation privilégiée complements his description of

jouissance because his interpretation of both terms insists on a more intimate

connection between two people. Hybrid identity, code-switching and

connectivity between cultures and languages in Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s works

and throughout this thesis borrow upon Barthes’ vision of human relationships.

His ideas transgress the borders of normally accepted cultural codes. There is

also a continual interrogation of conventional social codes in his writing that

complement how I interpret Anzaldúa’s and Goto’s hybrid style of writing.

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Because of the vast differences between them my juxtaposition of Goto

and Anzaldúa is a somewhat transgressive act. These writers represent

different geographic, cultural and linguistic origins, however I do not attempt

to compare or contrast these differences. Their voices, voices that speak from

the periphery, are initiators of a communicative approach I interpret as a dance

form where readers are seduced by an image. An instantiation of this image is

their usage of linguistic code-switching. The points of convergence in these

works are therefore limited to their use of linguistic hybridity understood as a

tool of intellectual and seductive communication between two people.

Historical Context

Borderlands/La Frontera addresses differences of language, race,

gender, religion, and sexual orientation that shape Anzaldứa’s mestiza identity.

The anthology This Bridge Called My Back, published in 1981, provides a

time-specific framework for polemical discourse in Anzaldứa’s autohistoria.

The collection of letters, public addresses, poems, transcripts, personal

conversation and interviews illustrates different feminist perspectives of

women of colour in the U.S. in the 1980s. In the anthology, Anzaldứa

identifies herself as a Third World woman writer “similar and yet so different”

from other writers (Bridge Called My Back 163). She can only wield her

power through writing and by reclaiming all her tongues.

Moreover, as a lesbian of color in the 80s, she views herself as

“invisible both in the white male mainstream [literary] world and in the white

women’s feminist world, though [she acknowledges that] in the latter this is

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gradually changing” (165). She describes her writing as organic, stating that “it

works when the subject [she] started out with metamorphoses alchemically

into a different one, [for instance] one that has been discovered, or uncovered

by the poem” (172). She measures “the meaning and worth of [her] writing by

how much [she puts herself] on the line and how much nakedness [or

vulnerability]” she achieves (172). Her refusal to translate the Spanish and

Nahuatl (indigenous) words, phrases, epigraphs and poems in Borderlands/La

Frontera asserts her mestiza specificity. The title This Bridge Called My Back

brings together the desire for mestiza solidarity and a Chicana feminism.

Chrrie Moraga translates this solidarity as “family who first only knew each

other in ... [their] dreams ... who have [now] come together ... to make faith a

reality [of] ... a life between all of us” (xix). For Moraga, the dream of a life

together means being “met at the river” (xix). I understand the river as a

metaphor of continuity, of fluidity between women.

Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms, in many respects a sequel to Joy

Kogawa’s novel Obasan, presents travel between languages as an instrumental

aspect of (re)constructing an immigrant’s marginalized individual and group

image. Thus this work explores continuity and fluidity differently. In Obasan

the story focuses on the oppression, internment, and dispersal of Japanese

Canadians during and after WWII, in the wake of Pearl Harbour. This period

in Canadian history marks the racial segregation of an entire population of

Japanese Canadians, discriminated against and stripped of their rights as

Canadian citizens. Symbolically, Chorus of Mushrooms may be read as a

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vehicle of repair, restoration, and reinvention of the fragmented, silenced

Japanese Canadian voice. In Kogawa’s and Goto’s novels, the old woman

embodies the group, the voice of continuity. Obasan’s silence in Kogawa’s

novel symbolizes the group’s silenced and fragmented identity. In Goto’s

novel, Naoe’s incessant communication in Japanese symbolically

(re)constructs and (re)asserts the silenced collective voice of Japanese

Canadians. “Words, words, words, WORDS….My body folds over itself

under the weight….akiramete…the words seep from my nostrils, my ears,

even leak from my paper dry eyes” (Goto, 21). Naoe and her granddaughter,

Murasaki (re)claim their Japanese voice and also validate their ties with the

dominant English Canadian culture through their desire to be a part of both

worlds. Moreover, as women of colour, they construct their particular feminist

voices (like Anzaldứa) through a celebration of their cultural and linguistic

differences.

Gloria Anzaldúa

I read the celebration of difference in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La

Frontera as a multi-lingual and culturally hybridized dance between different

forms of expression, poetically strung together.

Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino,

Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian...resemble the

bordertowns....The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in

the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner

changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing

happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our

heads (Anzaldúa, Borderland 109).

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The preceding quotation, taken from the chapter entitled La conciencia de la

mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness, is an appeal to her Chicano

community to reclaim its “true faces…[their] dignity and [their] self-respect”

(109) Her inner struggles and need for validation of self come across even

more intimately when she addresses readers in her Chicano language(s). In this

chapter, she speaks of the Mestiza Way and what it means to “take inventory

… from her ancestors” (104). Anzaldúa shifts between first person and third

person narration in this chapter to speak personally and objectively. In Spanish

she voices her desire to “get rid of the unworthy, the denial, the confusion, the

brutalizing. Keep the judgment, deep and rooted, from the elders” (Translation

Jimenez). This English translation of her Spanish words: “Luego bota lo que

no vale, los desmientos, los desencuentos, el embruteciemiento. Aguarda el

juicio, hondo y enraízado, de la gente antigua” continues with an English

commentary about oppressive traditions that contain women and queers

negatively. Thus in the preceding English translation she addresses the close-

minded views of the elders in her community however she does not deliver

this message to English readers in quite the same way. This technique of

code-switching that Anzaldúa seems to effortlessly engage in illustrates her

desire to not only move fluidly between words, between worlds but to

privilege certain people with her meaning-making process and exclude others.

Anzaldúa’s desire for such fluidity and her need to decide who she

privileges with her communication and more importantly how she may be

understood are emphatic refusals on her part of hegemony and domination

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present inside any culture. Language is a powerful tool in this process of

contestation. We must remember, as Zabus points out that

the domination of ... [language] has nothing to do with any allegedly

inherent linguistic superiority of the European language over [an Other]

... language, although some upholders of a decadent purism will

advance obsolete arguments on linguistic superiority (Zabus 42).

Anzaldúa’s position on this issue is clear. She does not see herself as a product

of one homogeneous cultural or linguistic identity so she employs different

linguistic expressions as a strategy for remaining outside the ideology of one

dominant linguistic, social, or cultural group. Anzaldúa’s perspective, which

remains on many levels between and outside the Chicano and American

culture, is nevertheless a powerful symbol of connectivity, of code-switching

between cultures, and of linguistic and cultural hybridization. Her writing style

is transgressive, edgy, and rebelliously in opposition to dominant social codes

of conduct and behaviour.

Her rebellion reveals itself most effectively in her mix of languages, in

her refusal to translate her references in Other languages where meaning is

necessary to grasp some of her deeper intentions. In order to cast a more

favourable light upon the somewhat forced pedagogical process that is

expected of readers (through personal translation), I locate its value in terms of

beauty and the sublime as presented in Kantian terms in Sommer’s writing.

According to Kant, “beauty excites love…the sublime elicits respect because it

threatens love…the delight in the sublime does not so much involve positive

pleasure as admiration or respect” (quoted in Sommer 127). I equate beauty to

single linguistic codes, in this case English and French, the two ruling

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European languages in many parts of Europe and the official languages here in

Canada. In my understanding of code-switching between languages without

literal translation, I understand the term sublime as admiration or respect of

Other linguistic and cultural codes. Moreover, writers who engage a dominant

tongue in a hybrid discourse with their respective (m)other tongues are trying

to “uncover the cultural layers and contesting worlds in ferment” in the wake

of a dominant and dominating narrative (Zabus 2). Unlike Chantal Zabus’

palimpsest, where meaning between dominant and Other tongues is an

“overlapping space”, Anzaldúa paints meaning between (m)other tongue(s)

and English alongside one another, on the same canvas. Languages are

understood as adjacent, connective spaces. This position promotes a fluid

communication between languages and cultural codes. It is also a space of

continual movement between fixed binary positions. Dwelling in this space

has its rewards and challenges.

For instance, in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, un-translated

words and sentences create gaps in how the English reader engages in the

Chicana writer’s meaning-making process. There are many moments in

Anzaldúa’s work where a translation is critical if the reader wishes to

understand the meaning as much as the intent behind her words. However a

literal translation does not always provide an effective answer. Just as Zabus

speaks of “indigenization as a “double-edged weapon, a tortuous instrument of

liberation” code-switching in Anzaldúa’s writing illustrates her attachment to

different linguistic voices as her own tortuous process of liberation (Zabus 44).

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In this process, she complicates the writer/reader pact, the process of

communicative exchange (see Smith and Watson) and coherence through

many intersections of un-translated words and passages in Spanish and other

Chicano/Indian dialects and/or languages. These intersections express

Anzaldứa’s desire to validate her hybrid linguistic and cultural spaces. Thus

she deliberately complicates the communicative exchange in her writing. In

this autohistoria her lived experiences as a mestiza Chicana feminist and

lesbian frame her desire to liberate her multiple subjectivities. However she

insists on being heard on her terms which means through a multiplicity of

voices. In the first part of the text, there are over twenty short and long

epigraphs along with random words and phrases interspersed on almost every

page of her seven essays. The second half of the text is a collection of

Anzaldúa’s poetry. Her hybrid language writing strategy, with its fusion of

poems, Indian legends and myths, historical and personal stories, allows her to

choose when and how she privileges bilingual English and Chicano readers

over unilingual English readers.

Hiromi Goto

In a different vein, Goto’s use of code-switching and hybridity in

Chorus of Mushrooms toys with language so that the meaning-making process

is at times a negotiation of how readers understand Japanese cultural and

linguistic codes. Goto sprinkles Japanese words and phrases throughout her

story to tease the reader’s understanding of meaning behind Goto’s words.

Through this teasing out process, there are also some humorous aspects. Her

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play with the term oriental for instance is a satirical reference aimed at those

who employ it as an adjective without necessarily understanding its meaning

in concrete terms. Murasaki learns of the expression oriental sex from her

junior high school boyfriend. However it is clear that she has no real

understanding of what it means. Murasaki teases her mother about the reason

for her breakup saying “Mom, he wanted to have Oriental sex with me” and

when her mother responds with “Oh well, the Bible says we should wait”,

granddaughter and grandmother chuckle at her response (Goto, Chorus 124).

Later as an adult, Murasaki asks her Japanese lover to “have Oriental sex”

with her (123). Neither knowing its literal definition, they agree to make it up

as they go along. Thus Goto’s use of oriental in this way suggests that some

expressions or words are encoded inside stereotypes. Such expressions are

created without any real sense of meaning behind them. These types of

examples invite readers to speculate on how empty stereotypes find their way

into mainstream thinking. With such references Goto’s tone is somewhat

mocking however no cultural or lingustic translation is needed to understand

her point. However like Anzaldúa’s use of non translation writing techniques

that privilege certain readers over others, there are also instances in Goto’s

writing where the reader needs to seek translation in order to engage more

intimately in a dialogical exchange.

Goto’s use of untranslated Japanese words and phrases is targeted at

English readers. Unlike Anzaldúa, who, at times, speaks directly to the readers

in her Chicano community, Goto’s focus is on the unilingual English reader.

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Moreover, her hybrid linguistic exchanges hold a less polemical tone than

Anzaldúa. The protagonists in this story, Naoe and her granddaughter

Murasaki, employ the oral tradition of telling stories to reinvent themselves as

bicultural (Canadian and Japanese) women and celebrate their different voices.

Naoe communicates with Murasaki in Japanese even before Murasaki learns

the language. Later when Naoe leaves the family home, grandmother and

granddaughter continue to communicate across barriers of space, symbolically

collapsing such barriers. I read non translation in their dialogue as an assertion

of their need to remain connected intimately, thus moving between Japanese

and English. When Murasaki needs advice she calls her grandmother who

immediately answers in Japanese: Hai! Obachan da yo. Dòshita no, sonnani

òkina koe o dashite. This translates roughly as: Yes, it’s me. What’s the

matter? You are shouting. Murasaki’s subsequent response does not offer the

English reader any information about what Naoe has just said to her

granddaughter. “Oh Obachan. Am I losing my mind? I can understand what

you’re saying, and how can we be talking anyway? I must be insane!” (130).

Like Anzaldúa, the contextual meaning of Goto’s writing style is not lost

however in such instances the nuanced more intimate dialogue is unavailable

to the English reader. Through their relationships with an English Canadian

and a Japanese immigrant, Naoe and Murasaki also illustrate their desire for

Other languages. Anzaldúa and Goto posit intersections between Spanish and

Japanese – their language(s) of cultural origin (respectively) – in dominant

English texts. This allows them to create a certain opposition between

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languages and at the same time illustrate how celebrating such difference can

bring cultures together, through a deeper understanding of the Other

(especially in Naoe’s case because she lives an adventure with an Albertan

cowboy, on her terms).

Unilingual Readers

A text is made of multiple writings,

drawn from many cultures and entering

into mutual relations of dialogue, parody,

contestation, but there is one place where

this multiplicity is focused and that place is

the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the

author.

Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author

If the lens of multiplicity is focused on the reader (as Barthes suggests),

then it seems like a logical conclusion that writers who draw upon different

linguistic and cultural codes in their works are writing to provoke and tease

readers with their hybrid writing style. Again Barthes’ view of friendships as

une relation privilégiée is a valuable reference in understanding code-

switching techniques. The process of meaning versus intention inside

linguistic and cultural codes is best understood, in my opinion, when it occurs

between two people. This focus on personal relationships is an important one

in my understanding of code-switching and how readers engage directly with

the meaning versus intention behind the writer’s words, especially when they

choose to seek meaning inside a hybrid landscape of cultural and linguistic

references. These readers implicitly consent to a different kind of

communication process, one that implicates them more actively in how they

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read stories. In such instances, how is the role of the unilingual reader

complicated and privileged through the process of negotiating code-switching

and un-translated passages in Other languages?

In Anzaldứa’s work, code-switching between Spanish, other dialects,

and English obliges the reader to recognize and decipher various cultural and

linguistic references. Without a complete engagement with dominant and

Other languages, the meaning-making process is, in some instances,

compromised. In this work, an intersection between un-translated minority

languages and dominant ones encourages readers to confront cultural and

linguistic differences and seek meaning in plural terms, outside the hegemony

of the English language. Anzaldứa engages the unilingual reader in an

interactive process of meaning-making between languages. By doing so,

readers navigate inside “a world with too many voices speaking all at once, a

world where syncretism and parodic invention are becoming the rule, not the

exception…[where] it becomes increasingly difficult to attach human identity

and meaning to a coherent ‘culture’ or ‘language’” (Clifford, Predicament of

Culture 95). Anzaldứa’s linguistic hybridity does not pigeonhole narrative

identity inside one linguistic voice. In the first part of the text, there are over

twenty short and long epigraphs along with random words and phrases

interspersed on almost every page of her seven essays. When it is simply a

question of Other linguistic words nestled between English ones, the meaning-

making process may be viewed as a creative journey. An understanding of the

main points is not hindered in any significant manner. For instance, when

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Anzaldứa refers to the “prohibited and forbidden [as] Los atravesados [who]

live here” no translation is needed to understand that she speaks of people on

the margins, people she classes as “those who cross over, or go through the

confines of the “normal”” (Anzaldúa, Borderland 25). Without compromising

meaning, such an insertion of another language simply adds a more creative

edge to the meaning-making process. However when Anzaldứa speaks of her

rebellion against cultural and social codes inside her Chicano world, the

torrent of linguistic hybridity becomes more difficult to decipher. She explains

how she

had to leave home…to find [her] own intrinsic nature…buried under

the personality that had been imposed on [her and how she] was the

first in six generations to leave the Valley, the only one in [her] family

to ever leave home…of [her] own accord me dicen, Como te gusta la

mala vida (38).

The last portion of the preceding quotation offers readers no clear translation.

While readers understand that Anzaldứa’s decision to leave home is not an

easy one, they cannot fully grasp the more intimate meaning behind these last

words. It roughly translates as “her taste for a bad life” suggesting that leaving

home means going after something negative. Her desire to leave home is only

understood as a transgressed act through the meaning in the last sentence.

Later when Anzaldứa speaks of Guadalupe as “the chaste protective mother,

the defender of the Mexican people” the epigraph that follows, more than 20

lines, is entirely in her Mexican languages and/or dialects (50). Following the

epigraph, the reader is given a brief history of Guadalupe and therefore s/he is

able to understand its general gist. However, the deeper meaning as well as the

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tone behind her words remains lost to the reader. It is an important example so

I include the Spanish and translated versions here.

El nueve de diciembre de año 1531

A las cuatro de la madrugada

Un pobre indioque se ilamaba Juan Diego

Iba cruzando el cerro de Tepeyác

Cuando oyó un canto de pájaro.

Alzó la cabeza vio que la cima del cerro

Estaba cubierta con una brillante nube blanca.

Parada en frente del sol

Sobre una luna creciente

Sostenida por un ángel

Estaba una azteca

Vestida en ropa de india

Nuestra Señora Maria de Coatlalopeub

Se le apareció.

‘Juan Dieguito, El-que-habla-como-un-águila,’

la Virgen le dijo en el lenguaje azteca.

Para hacer mi altar este cerro elijo.

‘Dile a tu gente que yo soy la madre de Dios,

A los indios yo les ayudaré.’

Estó se lo contó a Juan Zumárraga

Pero el obispo no le creyó.

Juan Diego volvió, Ilenó su tilma

Con rosas de castilla

Creciendo milagrosamente en la nieve.

Se las ilevó al obispo,

Y cuando abrió su tilma

El retrato de la Virgen

Ahí estaba pintado (50).

Englishd translation by Carlos Jiminez:

On December ninth of 1531

At four in the morning

A humble Indian whose name was Juan Diego

was crossing the Tepeyac hill

when he heard a bird’s song.

He raised his head to see the top of the hill

Covered with a bright white cloud

Standing in front of the sun

Over a crescent moon

Sustained by an angel

There was an Aztec woman

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Dressed with indigenous clothes

Our Lady Mary of Coatlalopeub

She appeared to him

“Juan Dieguito, he who speaks like an eagle”

The virgin said in the Aztec language.

I choose this hill to build my altar.

“Tell your people I`m the mother of God,

I’ll help the Indians.”

He told this to Juan Zumarraga

But the bishop didn`t believe him.

Juan Diego came back, fill his tilma (tilma: apron like garment)

With Castilla roses

Growing mysteriously in the snow.

He took them to the bishop,

And when he opened his tilma

The virgin portrait

Was painted on it (tilma)

The English explanation Anzaldúa provides is much shorter and the personal

dialogues in the preceding translation are not given. This omission does not

negatively exclude the English reader, however it does not give the English

reader the same intimate understanding of Maria Coatlalopeuh suggesting that

Anzaldúa chooses when and how she excludes English readers from intimate

exchanges of meaning. In such instances the unilingual reader makes the

choice to either seek some sort of translation or simply focus on the brief

summary Anzaldứa provides. I must admit that I found these instances

difficult. However it was a frustration that resulted from my desire to know the

Other language rather than seeking a literal translation which I am certain does

not capture the more intimate nuanced meaning given in Spanish. However I

would not have been completely satisfied relying only on the summarized

account of events. I felt goaded and teased into wanting a deeper

understanding of Anzaldứa’s words. I have included some other examples of

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how Anzaldúa privileges Spanish speakers over English ones (see the

appendix at the end of this chapter) to illustrate how Anzaldúa complicates

and/or compromises meaning-making for English readers. If I wish to respect

Sommer’s vision of a creative challenge it is clear that a bilingual reading

would have offered me a more privileged journey in Anzaldúa’s meaning-

making process.

The second half of the text is a collection of Anzaldứa’s poetry. Her

hybrid writing style moves effortlessly between Spanish and English stringing

together poems alongside Indian legends and myths, and juxtaposing historical

contexts alongside Anzaldứa’s personal stories. Such hybrid writing allows her

to choose when and how she privileges the Chicano community, the English

one, or both, with a more intimate reading of her narrative. In these instances,

the monolingual reader is sometimes excluded from an intimate understanding

of her process of meaning-making versus intention. In this half of her book,

translation is an absolute must because poems are either entirely in English or

in Anzaldứa’s (m)other languages. It is in these sections that the unilingual

reader cannot effectively trace the meaning behind all her words. The

epigraphs and comments Anzaldứa makes without offering readers a direct

translation are an overt tool of contestation against the hegemony of the

language.

In the final part of Anzaldứa’s autohistoria an interview between

Karen Ikas and Anzaldứa allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the

writer. This last section rounds out the book’s many hybrid sections perfectly

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because it allows readers to end their meaning-making journey with Anzaldứa

on a personal note. She speaks of her childhood, her views on education, the

children’s books she writes, her connection to languages, and ultimately her

understanding of what it means to be a border person. Her affinity and desire

to speak and to write in different languages, to code-switch, are tools to

legitimize her differences. Interestingly enough Anzaldứa claims that her code-

switching in Borderlands respects “certain standards…certain rules” and

therefore the majority of her writing does not render the meaning-making

process “inaccessible” to English readers (Anzaldứa 232). While it is not

inaccessible, it is most definitely a challenge to read. I understand this

challenge Anzaldứa creates for unilingual readers as a natural consequence of

Anzaldứa wishing to “write for different audiences…more of an international

audience that came across from one world to the other and that has border

people” (233). Her desire to code switch is as important as her need to write in

different genres such as “autobiography, fiction, poetry, theory, criticism”

because, as she points out, she wishes to “change the disciplines, to change the

genres, to change how people look at a poem, at theory or at children’s books”

(232-233). Ultimately Anzaldứa wishes to transgress as many lines and

established rules as she can. She understands that there is a fine line between

rules to break and readers to reel in. She is aware that she needs “other people

who deepen … [her] fears, like professors, critics, the students” (233). She

admits that she wants and needs their approval and their acceptance. In spite of

this confession by Anzaldứa, I still believe that there are enough moments of

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inaccessibility in her use of code-switching between languages that forces

readers to engage in a certain translation process if they do not know her

(m)other languages. However I view this challenge, as previously noted, as a

creative challenge and as a necessary obstacle.

Goto’s usage of untranslated Japanese words and phrases in Chorus of

Mushrooms is not as extensive as Anzaldứa’s use of code-switching between

her languages of reference. However, similar to Anzaldứa, there is also a

hybrid, linguistic process of communication in Goto’s work which illustrates

her desire to communicate and write in different languages, without always

translating. With Goto, however the meaning-making process is between Goto

and English speakers. In her essay, “Words Like Buckshot”: Taking Aim at

Notions of Nation in Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms,” Mari Sasano

suggests that Goto’s refusal to translate Japanese words is her way of

“marking out her liminal territory to her readers” (Sasano 6). In an article

entitled “Translating the Self: Moving between Cultures,” Goto explains that

“the text is also a place of colonization” where “difference exists, all cannot be

understood, language could and can be a barrier” (Goto, Translating the Self

12). As I understand Goto, language difference should not be erased; rather, it

needs to be articulated as an obstruction, otherwise the language in question

will disappear or be replaced by another language. Goto assumes that most of

her readers are “English-speaking and [they] do not understand Japanese” (12).

Unlike Anzaldứa, who speaks to readers in her Chicana and English

communities, Goto tells us that her target reader is the unilingual English one.

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The words or sentences in Japanese that remain un-translated in Goto’s

work are generally simple expressions. Unlike Anzaldứa’s usage of non

translation which addresses political, social, and even racial issues, in Goto’s

un-translated Japanese references there are no passionate declarations or angry

tirades. Rather her integration of Japanese may be read as a natural process of

immigrant storytelling, where a hybrid dialogue is to be expected. Throughout

the book, there are many sections that begin with the words “mukãshi,

mukãshi, õmukãshi” which translates as “long long time ago” thus blurring the

lines between past and present moments. In these instances, non translation

may be read as a converging of time lines so that the events are the focus and

not when they occur. When Naoe tells Murasaki about her childhood in Japan,

she first mentions the word hanko on page 8 without providing a translation

until page 10. From the information she shares, it is easy for the reader to

understand the meaning of this word as some sort of a personal family seal,

which Goto later confirms. The importance of this reference is one of family

tradition and family pride. “If someone were to ask you to sign a letter of

recommendation and you didn’t have your hanko, why you would shame the

name engraved on it, passed down from fourteen generations” (Goto, Chorus

of Mushrooms 8) By avoiding an immediate translation, Goto attaches a more

authentic value to the notion of a family seal as an important signifier of

personal and specific identity.

Similar to the introduction and explanation of the hanko, Goto

develops Naoe’s character in a unique style. The reader’s first understanding

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of Naoe is of a woman in her eighties who rambles on in Japanese, whether

she has an audience or not. Later the reader recognizes that behind these

ramblings is a very sharp mind that has managed to learn English and French

by watching Sesame Street. This is perhaps Goto’s strategic way of illustrating

that immigrants can learn Other languages at any age. That language

acquisition occurs through a children’s show is somewhat comical and yet

shrewdly intelligent because it breaks down barriers between how children and

adults learn, how children and adults behave. Many of Naoe’s antics, actions,

and reactions may be interepreted as childlike. Like a child, she speaks

spontaneously and her storytelling skills suggest that she has an extremely

active imagination. However, there is also great wisdom behind Naoe’s way of

engaging with language(s). Naoe’s renaming of her granddaughter from

Muriel to Murasaki is not simply a gesture of stamping her granddaughter with

a Japanese identity; it is also about bestowing upon Murasaki the gift of

discovery that comes from storytelling. When her granddaughter asks her why

she has been renamed Murasaki, Naoe’s response in Japanese: “Ana ga jibun

de imi o sagashite chyodai” is not translated for Murasaki or English reader(s)

(17). I felt a strong desire to understand these Japanese words so I sought the

translation from a friend. This phrase which translates as: “you should find the

meaning of it by yourself” has an important significance. Naoe’s desire for

Murasaki to find the answer herself signals the crucial links between

discovery, knowledge, and identity construction. I read the journey Murasaki

embarks upon as the intellectual stimulation Sommer’s speaks of in her

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defense of bilingual education. This rather simple example also accentuates the

way Goto plays with Japanese words to create some deliberate gaps in

meaning for English readers.

The desire to sabotage the meaning-making process is addressed

differently in Anzaldứa’s and Goto’s writing. However both writers converge

on one point: in their travel between languages, they construct hybrid narrative

identities that stand in opposition to and challenge notions of authenticity

based on dominant languages and pure cultures. Moreover, I view their non-

translation writing strategies as a creative privilege because this strategy

obliges the unilingual dominant language reader to seek meaning outside the

dominant language. In addition, these code-switching writing strategies allow

readers to experience language in Bakhtinian terms, what Simon refers to as

« un jeu ouvert de langages en dialogue » (Simon, Trafic des langues 28)

where, as Simon suggests, the“I” of the minority voice weakens the “we” of

the dominant voice (144). Simon also affirms the notion of (re)invention

stating that « la langue et la culture ne sont pas à retrouver dans une logique de

la conservation, mais à inventer, dans le risque et l’exigence de la créativité »

(47) Self-understanding, I believe, develops from a deeper, more creative

understanding of the Other and the act of non-translation in texts promotes a

more enriched exchange between readers and the stories they read. Anzaldứa’s

voice may be heard as personal and collective. She shares her story and her

vision in both contexts. She also speaks personally and collectively for

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Chicana women whose voices are suppressed behind male cultural codes from

both sides of the border: Mexican and American.

Similarly, Goto’s protagonists should be heard personally and

collectively. The stories Naoe shares with Murasaki and the stories Murasaki

shares with her Japanese lover illustrate the generational value of oral

traditions as markers of linguistic and cultural identity. Anzaldứa and Goto, in

their respective styles, insist on and contest the hegemony of one language and

engage the reader in a multilingual and bilingual (respectively) interpretation

of their works. By aiming to unite readers inside a linguistic and cultural

communication between languages, such writers align their ideas alongside

Zabus’ vision that “culture contact, even in the form of the notorious culture

clash, always leads to the mode of linguistic hybridization” (Zabus ii).

Anzaldứa’s and Goto’s mode of linguistic hybridization is both fluid and

distinct. The intersection of languages creates gaps in some instances and in

other instances code-switching between language(s) is simply a tool to identify

and validate the different linguistic and cultural voices of these writers. Any

clashes between culture and hybridization can be better understood if we look

at how music today, especially inside a North American context, has evolved.

Music inside a North American context cannot be understood outside the

influence of jazz which is rooted in black slavery. Similar to Zabus’ African

palimpsest which is layered and cross-pollinated by different cultural and

linguistic codes, virtually all of today’s musical genres are layered and cross-

pollinated by black jazz and blues influences.vi

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In a similar vein, some of Anzaldứa’s references to music validate the

hybrid value in music. References to norteño music, “North American border

music” or conjuntos folk music “borrowed from German immigrants” or

corridos about “Mexican heroes who do valiant deeds against the Anglo

oppressors” illustrate the various cultural influences music has had in shaping

Anzaldứa’s attachment to her cultural voices (Anzaldứa, Borderland 83).

Music, from whatever genre or style, has become a universal and unifying

language and its ability to borrow from, (re)create, mix, (re)invent styles is a

great testament to its power and to its ability to bring together people of

different races, ages, cultures, even religions. Such universal appreciation

inevitably creates a more fluid passage between different cultural and

linguistic voices. Although music without lyrics is a nonverbal form of

communication, in its rhythms and beats it evokes emotions in its listeners. It

is why music is such a powerful tool of creation, of healing, and ultimately of

communication. I view the value of code-switching and hybridity in the works

of Anzaldứa and Goto as a creative cross pollination between language(s) and

culture(s), ultimately as music, as a dance of sorts between people.

Non translation and Code-Switching

Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire? Il faut

à tout prix transformer le fait en

idée, en description, en

interprétation, bref lui trouver un

autre nom que le sien.

Roland Barthes

If I contrast Goto’s use of code-switching with Anzaldứa’s, I would

say that Goto’s method may be viewed as a flirtatious engagement between

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languages. While there are instances where un-translated words or passages

require the reader to seek translation, the tone of Goto’s writing is not as

polemical as Anzaldứa’s. For instance, she describes the scarecrow on their

mushroom farm in Japanese. There is no literal translation offered however the

Japanese is nestled between English in such a way that the reader understands

meaning contextually as illustrated in the following quotation:

Our teru teru bozu swung barely, almost motionless, from the rafters

outside the house. In the warm wet of summer rain.

Teru teru bozu

Teru bozu

Ashita tenkini shite okure

He would charm the rain away and Obasan would take us to the park

(Goto, Chorus 6).

Such code-switching between English and Japanese is sporadically present in

the entire work. In those instances when translation is necessary, readers never

experience exclusion from meaning as they do in Anzaldứa’s work. For this

reason, in this section I focus more-or-less exclusively on Anzaldứa’s writing.

Contrary to Goto’s more playful tone, Anzaldứa emphatically contests the

hegemony of any one language. Her linguistic hybridity is imbedded in

fragmented meanings, code-switching between dialects and languages. Since

she does not, or more importantly cannot, translate herself inside one

homogeneous cultural or linguistic identity, employing different linguistic

expressions is a strategy for remaining outside the ideology of one dominant

group, language or cultural reference. By “intervening in an interconnected

world, [she is]…to varying degrees…caught between cultures [and] implicated

in others” (Clifford, Predicament of Culture 11). Anzaldứa bears the same

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task as James Clifford’s ethnographer; she travels between cultures, exploring

her identity as an in-between passage continually in movement between

cultures and languages, not as a fixed point of contact inside one linguistic or

cultural space. Anzaldứa’s perspective, a blend of connectivities between

languages and cultures outside dominant and fixed Chicano or American

English cultural codes is an important one. A strong level of

interconnectedness between languages juxtaposes Anzaldứa’s stance against

any universal readings and even against how something is labelled universal.

In this way, her greatest weapon of resistance against the hegemony of

language(s) is a multi-voiced narrative. Rather than marginalizing her, I see

Anzaldứa’s linguistically hybrid voice as a position of value. In her role as

Other I believe that she privileges her many voices and defends linguistic

hybridity in identity construction.

As Bakhtin points out “in the realm of culture, outsideness is a …

powerful factor… [I]t is only in the eyes of another culture that foreign culture

reveals itself fully and profoundly” (Bakhtin 7). Anzaldua identifies her

outside position in the borderlands as a physical, psychological, sexual and

spiritual space. It exists “where two or more cultures edge each other, where

people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower,

middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals

shrinks with intimacy” (Anzaldứa, Borderland 19). This notion of intimacy is

a key element of this thesis and how it expresses the value of code-switching

without translation. To shrink the space between her multiple subjectivities,

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Anzaldứa interweaves Spanish and English narratives. According to Smith and

Watson (previously quoted in Chapter One, it is also pertinent here), she

effectively traces the hybridity of her own identity in a way that

suggests how multiple and intersectional identities can be. The

very title both differentiates English from Spanish and joins

them at the border of the slash. The [subject] “I”/eye move back

and forth across the border, just as Anzaldứa writes of

navigating the intersections of sexuality, ethnicity, gender, and

nationality at the constructed borderland of Texas and Mexico

(Smith and Watson 37).

Anzaldứa (1999, 20) explains that “the switching of ‘codes’ in this book from

English to Castillian Spanish to the North Mexican dialect to Tex-Mex to a

sprinkling of Nahuatl to a mixture of all these, reflects [the

Chicano]…language, a new language—the language of the Borderlands”.vii

Writing simultaneously in different languages without translating everything

into English allows her to break down paradigms and extract her narrating “I”

and her ideological “I” from any “traditional frames…oppressive histories and

myths that censor” their difference (Smith, 154). For instance, the section in

the first essay of Borderlands/La Frontera following a Spanish epigraph, reads

“The Aztecas del norte…compose the largest single tribe or nation of

Anishinabeg (Indians) found in the United States today….[who]…call

themselves Chicanos and see themselves as people whose true homeland is

Aztlan (the U.S. Southwest)” (Anzaldứa, Borderland 23). However, in another

essay Anzaldứa explains that, out of shame, many Mexicans do not

acknowledge their indigenous ancestry. This quotation, nestled between

Mexican lyrics and an English poem interspersed with Spanish, speaks to her

immediate need to assert her indigenous heritage.

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Each of Anzaldứa’s seven essays illustrates her different desire(s) and

her longing to “enact her multiple subjectivities,” each as a Barthesian relation

privilégiée (Anzaldứa 72). As I mention in my previous chapters, Barthes’

view of friendship, of exploring relationships as an intimate exchange between

two people, may be applied here metaphorically to illustrate the idea that

language communication is first and foremost an intimate exchange between

two people. Inside the context of a group, it is perhaps simpler, even

necessary, to communicate in one language to render the meaning-making

accessible to everyone simultaneously. This need for a cohesive understanding

inside a group is illustrated in Zabus’ example of Nigeria, a multi-lingual

nation-state “where several hundred languages are spoken, [where] the Head

of State addresses his fellow-countrymen in English and in nine major

languages, including the Arabic exolect; [and where] his message is further

translated into about forty languages without actually reaching all the people

of Nigeria” (Zabus 25). Within a political and national context, the logic of

having one common language to promote consensus on such issues as trade,

law, government, education at the primary and secondary levels, religion, et

cetera seems logical. Even though, within a West African context, “linguistic

imperialism is presented as the most insidious and pervasive aspect of

colonialism” it is understandable why “West Africa has ironically perpetuated

the dominance of the official European language” – because English has

“come to represent a unifying medium triumphing over the mutually

unintelligible West African languages” (Zabus 25). The point I wish to make

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here is that within a political and national context, I support the use of one

dominant language as a tool of effective communication. This vision does not

however hinder my desire to encourage the study of Other languages in

education. While it may seem a bit archaic, I would suggest that just as

religious studies dominated education in the past, language study should be a

greater focus in today’s education system. Moreover, I believe, as Sommer

suggests, that there is a humbling process for dominant language readers who

are confronted by Other languages, especially when there is not always a

translation available. It is visible with its “in-your-face foreignness…[one

that] disables nativists and makes them outsiders to some games. You don’t

know me. You don’t own me,” is the resounding message (Sommer 63). Such

barriers that divide nativists from foreigners are not healthy divisions.

Knowledge of multiple languages seems like the first step towards bridging

such divisions.

I would argue that Anzaldứa takes the idea of disabling nativists even

further. I understand her approach in terms of nation as Homi Bhabha speaks

of it in Nation and Narration. Bhabha suggests that the “essence of a nation is

that all individuals have many things in common and also that they have

forgotten many things” (Nation and Narration 11). This idea of commonality

is illustrated in each of Anzaldứa’s six essays, a mini-portrait of her personal

story nestled alongside a particular historical and cultural context that has

shaped, and continues to shape Mexico’s linguistic and cultural identity. It is a

past Mexico that Anzaldứa identifies with, a Mexico before its American

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conquest. Bhabha claims that there is no pure European race since “the leading

nations of Europe are nations of essentially mixed blood” (15). This is

certainly true of mixed Chicano blood. Much of Anzaldứa’s polemical

narrative stems from her desire to have this mixed blood accepted in respectful

terms. In the introduction to Anzaldứa’s work, Sonia Saldivar-Hull’s

translation of one of Anzaldứa’s Spanish epigraphs provides readers with the

source of her rebellion and her desire to confront her “Shadow-Beast”.

Anzaldứa’s “proclamation of independence for the mestiza bound within a

male-dominated culture,” is a personal address to the “men and male identified

women in her community” (Anzaldúa, Borderland 3). As a proclamation, it

also becomes an official document, therefore reading it in Spanish

authenticates its message within the Chicano community. Anzaldứa establishes

an intimate dialogue between herself and this audience [her Chicano

community elders] “who [could, but] refused to speak English” (3). Her

refusal to translate this epigraph suggests that she wishes to dialogue with her

community members on their linguistic terms. For Anzaldứa, these members,

those who represent its phallogocentric population, the Chicano, mexicano,

and even some Indian cultures “have no tolerance for deviance….[They view]

the queer…[as] the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe’s fear [of] being

different, being other and therefore lesser” (40). While Anzaldứa does not

ignore negative attitudes towards lesbians outside these cultures, this quotation

illustrates the sense of otherness she experiences within her own Chicano,

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Mexican and Indian cultures. She also experiences this sense of otherness from

the American side of the border as well.

I read essay one as an address to an American public. She articulates

her desire to reclaim Texas land as Mexican and indigenous, viewing it as “the

lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country – a border culture”

(25). She describes the borderland as “a vague and undetermined place created

by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (25). In essay two she

speaks about personal rebellion and betrayals and her desire to be heard as an

“Aztec female” because “her Chicana identity is grounded in the Indian

woman’s history of resistance” (43). Essay three speaks of pagan beliefs

specific to Mexican Catholics. “la Virgen de Guadalupe is the single most

potent religious, political and cultural image of the Chicano/mexicano…a

synthesis of the old world and the new, of the religion and culture of the two

races in our psyche, the conquerors and the conquered” (52). Guadalupe is an

important symbol in Anzaldứa’s story because it

unites people of different races, religions, languages: Chicano

protestants, American Indians and whites…she is the symbol of ethnic

identity and of the tolerance for ambiguity that…people who cross

cultures, by necessity possess (52).

In essay four she speaks of the Coatlicue state, another symbol, this time a

“symbol of the underground aspects of the psyche” (68) and how knowledge

and consciousness (in her case, asserting her lesbian sexuality as une relation

privilégiée) allow her “a travesia, a crossing,” a move towards a deeper self-

awareness and inevitably, self-acceptance (70). Similarly, in essay five, How

to Tame a Wild Tongue, Anzaldứa explains how the Chicano languages are

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“neither espanol ni ingles, but both…a forked tongue, a variation of two

languages” (77). As a result, she speaks Standard English, working class and

slang English, Standard Spanish, Standard Mexican Spanish, and other related

dialects (77). Traveling between languages, Anzaldứa demonstrates her desire

to have, and to use, her “Indian, Spanish, [and] white…tongue” and explore

her multiple subjectivities (81). In essay six, she reveals that writing allows her

to express her multiple desires, “making meaning out of the experience,

whatever it may be” (95). In her final essay, she seeks “a mestiza

consciousness…a breaking down of paradigms [one that]…depends on the

straddling of two or more cultures” (102). Each of these chapters relays a

different aspect of the straddling of cultures that Anzaldứa speaks of.

Anzaldứa’s writing illustrates different forms of insider/outsider

positions. Her usage of code-switching between languages and cultural codes

allows her to navigate between her different selves in a manner that respects

her multiplicity. For the reader, the value of such code-switching is first and

foremost a pedagogical one since meaning must be sought before the reader

can engage in a meaningful understanding of Anzaldứa’s story. This requires

the reader to speak her (m)other languages or seek translation. If the reader

speaks only English or Chicano Spanish then s/he risks mis-understanding

some of the deeper messages behind her hybridized cultural references.

Second, through such a process of code-switching Anzaldứa also engages

readers in a culturally and linguistically hybrid process of meaning-making.

Looking outside group dynamics, it seems the best form of connectivity

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between cultures occurs when communication takes place inside a Barthesian

sphere of une relation privilégiée. In such a process of exchange, beauty (in

Kantian terms) takes a backseat to the sublime. There is a respectful

cohabitation between different cultural and linguistic codes and in how one

person understands another. When individuals communicate in different

languages with each other, linguistic communication becomes a playground

for linguistic foreplay or Barthesian jouissance. Linguistic communication that

is hybridized creates desire for Other worlds and Other languages.

For Anzaldứa, her multi-linguistic play with words, phrases, poems,

operates in such a field of foreplay. Moreover her code-switching is a

continual reminder of how Other voices deserve recognition and respect. I

understand her desire for recognition and respect as something akin to

Bhabha’s vision that “nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” (Nation and

Narration 19). Although her multilingual voices bear the mark of strangeness

for readers grappling with meaning against a backdrop of words and references

that code switch between cultural, linguistic and historical lines, they are a

natural process of communication for Anzaldứa. I interpret the intensely

polemical code-switching Anzaldứa engages in as her desire to “inspire

passion without getting stuck there, because reflection allows one to take

pleasure in the intensity and in the moral capacity to extract from it” (Sommer

63). Such reflection that begins from a vantage point of strangeness leads to

different meaning-making processes where a multi-layered catalogue of

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linguistic and cultural codes allows readers to grasp meaning and intention

outside the realm of different cultural and linguistic markers.

There is a surprising desire for solidarity present in Anzaldứa’s hybrid

literary mix in different languages of narrative and poetry within a historical

and personal context. By evoking a historical past, she attempts to breathe the

fire of that past into a present-day context.. She is staking a claim to nation as

a hybrid playing field. Her writing for this reason may be understood as an

“autobiographical manifesto” because it allows Anzaldứa to transcribe her

narrating I as a “moi poétique” (to borrow the expression from Quebec poet

and translator Jacques Brault, previously mentioned in Chapter One it is also

of value here)viii (Smith and Watson 155). By having her ideological I and her

“moi poétique converge,” Anzaldứa speaks as writer and poet and enters the

realm of jouissance (over orgasm that Barthes differentiates between) and a

spiritual unity of nation Bhabha supports (Barthes, Fragments d’un discours

amoureux 155). For readers, this terrain of jouissance and spirituality is

understood through their level of engagement with the various passages

Anzaldứa poetically narrates through multiple code-switching techniques.

Anzaldứa even speaks of historical events in poetic terms. For instance,

her bilingual description of the U.S. and Mexican border as an open wound-

una herida abierta-where the “Third World grates against the first and

bleeds,” conveys a political message poetically. In more complex undertones,

the use of untranslated Spanish also allows Anzaldứa to contest, as she puts it,

the “white superiority [of Americans who] seized complete political power,

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stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted

in it” (Anzaldứa, Borderland 29). However many of the translations (from

Spanish to English) I sought reveal that Anzaldứa’s refusal to translate is not

always an overt tool to exclude the unilingual English reader. In some

instances, it is simply a marker of desire to express herself in different

languages, straddling her various identities as she chooses. For instance, the

following expression:

Son las costumbres que traicionan. La india en mi es la sombre: La

Chingada,Tlazolteotl, Coatlicue. Son ellas que oyemos lamentando a

sus hijas perdidas” (44) roughly translates as

It is the customs that betray. The indian in me is a shadow: the fucked

one [her own translation from earlier on], Tlazolteotl, Coatlicue [proper

names]. They are the ones we hear lamenting [or mourning] their lost

daughters.

The English references before and after this Spanish reference arguably

convey a similar meaning. In these passages Anzaldứa speaks about betrayal

from inside one’s own culture. For instance, she states that “the worst kind of

betrayal lies in making us believe that the Indian woman in us is the

betrayer…not me sold out my people but they me…because of the color of my

skin they betrayed me” (44). This convergence of similar meanings

demonstrates Anzaldứa’s desire to “write bilingually and to switch codes

without having always to [directly] translate” from Spanish to English (81).

Moreover, her refusal to translate all her references from Spanish to English

illustrates her refusal to accept English as her only language.

Zabus refers to code-switching between languages as an assertion of

choice and as a resistance to domination. According to African writer Chinua

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Achebe, “the complete renunciation of English” (qtd. in Zabus 35) is an

irrelevant option in a nation where “people...speak different mother tongues”

(25). However, Achebe also recognizes that “English [alone] is inherently

unsuitable for conveying the African experience” (35). Similarly, Anzaldứa’s

integration of Chicano languages demonstrates her desire to create fluidity

between binary positions, to converge her multiple selves and express her

particular subjectivity as Chicana. In doing so, she claims what Smith refers to

as “the subjectivity of [the] universal man,” where the focus turns to

“authority, legitimacy, and readability” (Smith, 155). However, she does this

outside a phallogocentric claim of universality. She defines this genealogy as

(as previously cited) “being both male and female…the embodiment of the

hieros gamos: the coming together of opposite qualities within,” (Anzaldứa,

Borderland 41). Employing a hybrid writing strategy also allows Anzaldứa to

assert her particular vision of Chicana feminism. She contests any ideology

(including her Chicano culture) that denies her right to be

Catholic/divine/pagan/ supernatural/sexual/homosexual/

Mexican/Indian/Texan/male/female. I employ slashes (a strategy I mention in

my Introduction and in Chapter One again) between these words to

demonstrate how “multiple and intersectional” her identity is, both uniting and

dividing her at these different borders (Smith and Watson 37). She explains

that nothing “in [her] culture approved of” her so she confronts the “rebel”

within, her “Shadow-Beast” on her terms, outside labels proscribed by

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conventional markers emanating from an American and/or Chicano context.

(Anzaldứa, Borderland 38).

Her hybrid discourse and emphasis on cultural differences

distinguishes her feminism from the dominant discourse of white feminists.

This attachment to different languages also asserts Anzaldứa’s Chicana lesbian

specificity. As previously quoted in Chapter One, Spivak’s questions “Who

am I? [must be extended in its inquiry to also ask:] Who is the other woman?

How am I naming her? How does she name me?” are valid in understanding

the voice of the socially and culturally defined feminine voice and here in this

chapter on linguistic hybridity. (Lionnet 3) Anzaldứa rejects white feminists

who “want…to apply their notion of feminism across all cultures….They

never left their whiteness at home….However, they wanted … [her] to give up

… [her] Chicananess and become part of them; [which meant she] was asked

to leave [her] race at the door” (Anzaldứa, Borderlands 231). Anzaldứa rejects

any universal reading of her Chicana subjectivity, particularly her Chicana

lesbian feminism. This includes the linguistic barriers she faces.

Thus she asserts her own particular hybrid genealogy through a

feminist discourse that “interpolates [her]…as native to the Americas and with

a non-Western, multiple identity” (2). She employs a narrating “I” to “find

[her] own intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed

on [her]” (38). As she puts it, “I am my language…[and] until I can accept as

legitimate Chicana Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex and all the other languages I

speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself” (81). In “Beyond postmodern

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politics: Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault,” Honi Fern Haber states that Foucault’s

“view of the relationship between language and power” rejects “the view that

the power of phallocentric discourse is total” (Haber 102). In this essay, Haber

argues that since “discourse is ambiguous and plurivocal, it is [also] a site of

conflict and contestation. Indeed, women, [like Anzaldua] can adopt and adapt

[discourse]…to their own ends” (102). For instance, Anzaldứa’s process of

interweaving songs and poetry in her narrative allows her to connect her

Indian origins with her Mexican ones on her terms. She “contests the old

inscriptions, the old histories, the old politics, the ancien regime…[of] social

reality…what Donna Haraway describes as our most important political

construction, a world-changing fiction” (Smith 157). Anzaldứa rejects social

stations created by Chicano and white male cultural codes.

Conclusion: Metaphor of Desire

La jouissance ce n’est pas ce qui répond

au désir (le satisfait), mais ce qui le

surprend, l’excède, la déroute, la dérive.

Roland Barthes

In the personal interview section of Borderlands, Anzaldứa shares an

insight about her writing that lends itself well to contrasting the writing styles

between her and Goto. She admits that she “didn’t know how to write

fiction…to do fiction you have to be free, imagine things, exaggerate –

whatever you need to do in order to convey the kind of reality that you are

trying to transmit” (Anzaldúa, Borderland 244). Where Anzaldứa struggles,

Goto seems to have mastered this art of imagining, exaggerating, and

(re)creating realities. Goto’s protagonists tell stories that create a certain

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connection between groups, in this instance the Japanese group and more

specifically Japanese women. In the acknowledgements, Goto explains how

“in the process of re-telling personal myth … [she has] taken tremendous

liberties with ... [her] grandmother’s history”. Through the liberties Goto

exercises in (re)shaping stories, she focuses on personal relationships to

symbolically create group bonds. Whether fictional or based on real events,

Goto’s approach suggests that relationships can be best understood inside a

Barthesian sphere of relation privilégiée.

In Chorus of Mushrooms, grandmother Naoe and her granddaughter

Murasaki construct their own bridges between Japanese and Canadian

cultures, largely through the process of one-on-one storytelling. As the title

suggests, mushrooms are symbolic of the musicality of sound(s) and smell(s).

Language and food play an integral role in how cultural identities are

(re)constructed. Murasaki’s involvement and intimate exchanges with a

nameless Japanese immigrant who does not speak English are a condensation

of her desire for recognition inside the feminine Japanese voice. Her nameless

lover is a symbol, or trope, of Japanese identity. Murasaki’s relationship with

him illustrates her longing to connect with her lost linguistic and cultural

Japanese origins. Growing up in rural, white Alberta, she discovers as early as

eleven years of age “that the shape of [her] face, [her] eyes, the colour of [her]

hair affected how people treated [her]” (175). It is her grandmother Naoe, not

her parents, who instils a sense of pride in Murasaki and educates her about

Japanese culture through stories. Storytelling is a powerful tool in this work,

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one that bridges linguistic and cultural gaps between English and Japanese

codes. Although Murasaki’s journey to discover her Japanese culture and

language is an important one, I view her relationship with Naoe along with

Naoe’s experiences as the strongest symbol of connectivity between culture(s)

and language(s). First, Naoe’s admits that she speaks English, even French.

Second, she leaves the sanctity of her daughter’s home, hitch hikes, and

embarks upon a series of roadside and sexual adventures with an Albertan who

happens to speak Japanese. At the end of Naoe’s journey she becomes a

masked bullrider in a rodeo, the ultimate symbol of how she appropriates an

Anglo male identity as her own. These clandestine adventures Naoe lives do

not interfere or compete with her passionate connection, linguistically and

culturally, to her Japanese origins. Rather, I view her adventures in

complementary terms. They illustrate her desire to engage with English

Canada. Moreover, her sexual experiences with Tengu the Albertan, validate

the importance Naoe places upon seeking out the Other to preserve oneself,

linguistically and culturally.

Naoe’s need to preserve her cultural and linguistic authenticity while

experiencing desire for Other cultures and languages is also illustrated through

the stories she tells Muraksaki. Naoe’s greatest voice is as spokesperson and

symbol of Japanese “women’s voices, storytelling, and female creativity” (Ty

152). She empowers Murasaki’s Japanese female voice and names herself

defender and spokesperson of Japanese myth and legend. For instance she tells

Murasaki about the legendary sister and brother “Izanami and Izanagi” who

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leave “their celestial home to create the world…Japan” (Goto, Chorus 45).

Through this story, she reshapes the Christian story of creation into a Japanese

one. Through another story, she speaks about a yamanba [a mountain woman]

who swallows maggots and pumps them from her breast as “millions of soft-

skinned people,” emphasizing the importance of creativity and the power

stories hold in (re)constructing and (re)affirming lost or forgotten traditions

(118). In the essay, “Thrumming Songs of Ecstasy: Female Voices in Hiromi

Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms,” Eleanor Ty describes the rewriting of folktales

in this novel as “attempts to re-script Japanese Canadian female subjectivity

and to challenge…the ‘old story’ of otherness”(Ty 153). Naoe’s imaginative

storytelling skills allow her to reconstruct the collective identity of Japanese

Canadian women and empower them – freeing them from both the constraints

of the male dominant Japanese culture and the dominant white Canadian

culture.

Naoe also re-scripts her granddaughter Muriel’s Canadian identity by

renaming her Murasaki, after the first female to write a novel in late tenth

century Japan. By renaming her granddaughter, Naoe symbolically transforms

Murasaki into a renowned storyteller and feminist hero. Similarly, Naoe

adopts an English translation of Murasaki and calls herself Purple. This

English translation marks Naoe’s entry as a bicultural Japanese-Canadian

citizen. It also allows Naoe to enter the rodeo, an Albertan English space, as

the “Purple Mask…a mystereeeerious bullrider and participate in a male-

dominated white sport” (Goto, Chorus 160). Masking her identity, “[s]he

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becomes “known, even renowned, but [since] no one knows who the Purple

Mask is, [it represents] both an unmistakable sign of identity and a guarantor

of anonymity” (McCullough 160). Naoe’s masked participation suggests that

she does not want the dominant group to be privy to her entry into their world-

thus implying there is more power in anonymity. Neither Murasaki nor Naoe

hides “behind [their] new names,” they simply “adopt names to suit their

identities, creating a movement between what each is born with and what each

eventually chooses [or longs] to become” (Sasano 4). These new names

symbolically allow each woman to enter Other linguistic and cultural spaces.

Contrasting Metaphors of Desire

The struggle is inner…the struggle has always been

inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness

of our situation must come before inner changes, which

in turn come before changes in society. Nothing

happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the

images in our heads. Anzaldứa, Borderlands

By way of concluding, I would like to contrast the different metaphors

of desire in each work. Anzaldứa’s desire for binaries to converge resonates in

all her essays and poems. She describes her existing hybrid in-between space

as “awkward, uncomfortable and frustrating…because…[she is] in the midst

of [continual] transformation” (Anzaldứa, Borderland 237).

Acknowledgement of this transformation is a valuable message because it

promotes self-love, ultimately Anzaldứa’s acceptance of her multiple selves.

Similarly, Naoe and Murasaki reveal their desire to be recognized and

respected as bicultural Japanese and Canadian citizens. Their respective

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experiences with Tengu (symbolic of the Canadian English culture) and an

unnamed Japanese immigrant (symbolic of the Japanese culture and language)

address their longing to (re)connect with Canadian and Japanese cultural

codes. Murasaki celebrates the importance of speaking English and Japanese.

Through her hybrid discourse, she promotes Leclerc’s co-habitation of

languages. Although the untranslated Japanese references do not equal the

English ones, the Japanese cultural codes co-exist on a creative level, on an

equal footing with English. Linguistic fluidity is personified by Murasaki’s

inability to hear difference between languages.

At one point, she questions her lover about his fluent English, knowing

that he has never formally studied it (Goto, Chorus 187). However he responds

by stating, “[W]hen I speak with you, I only speak in Japanese” (187).

Murasaki’s inability to distinguish between English and Japanese words may

be interpreted as her inability to choose one language over the other. As she

tells Naoe, “when there isn’t one word in English, it will be there in Japanese

and if there’s something lacking in your tongue, I’ll reach for it in English. So

I say to you in English [:] I love you Obachan” (54). Through this quotation,

Murasaki implies that her words in Japanese cannot complete all her thoughts

so she needs both languages to express herself. Thus, interweaving English

with Japanese in her discourse means that Murasaki needs both languages to

communicate. Before learning Japanese, Murasaki is trapped inside her

mother’s desire to completely assimilate her into English Canadian culture.

With Naoe’s help, Murasaki understands that her new found bilingual English

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and Japanese identities allow her to blur the space between where “one thing

end[s] and another begin[s]” (213). Similarly, Naoe’s confession that she

knows English reveals her hidden bilingual identity. However refusing to

speak the English language illustrates Naoe’s pride in the Japanese spoken

word. More importantly, it illustrates her desire to keep the spoken Japanese

word alive. Ultimately, Naoe’s desire to enter the rodeo, an English Canadian

cultural event is the strongest symbol of her desire to move fluidly between

cultural spaces.

For Anzaldứa, this fluidity between spaces, people, and languages

carries a more educational and philosophical message. For example, she refers

to the mirror “as an ambivalent symbol…it reproduces images…contains and

absorbs them” (Anzaldứa, Borderland 64). She explains that “a glance can

freeze us in place; it can “possess” us. It can erect a barrier against the world.

But in a glance also lies awareness, knowledge” (64). The awareness and

knowledge behind a glance she speaks of can be interpreted as a bridge, as a

space of continual movement between her multiple selves where the images

keep changing and the changes are not always easy ones. “Every time she

makes “sense” of something, she has to “cross over” kicking a hole out of the

old boundaries of the self and slipping under or over, dragging the old skin

along, stumbling over it….It is only when she is on the other side [not in any

permanent sense] that she sees things in a different perspective” (71). I read

this different perspective as the ultimate passage (of fluidity) between

diverging cultural codes, sexual codes, languages, religions, countries, and

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ultimately between people. Anzaldúa’s desire to converge her binaries

illustrates a latent dissatisfaction in such fluid passages. I read this

dissatisfaction as her desire for meaningful contact between binaries. This

fluidity–a radical putting into question of binaries–exists in both texts. It is an

important form of movement between foreign and dominant languages.

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CONCLUSION

Where can we go from here?

The person who finds his homeland sweet

is still a tender beginner, he to whom

every soil is as his native one is already

strong; but he is perfect to whom the

entire world is as a foreign place. The

tender soul has fixed his love on one spot

in the world; the strong person has

extended his love to all places; the perfect

man has extinguished his.

Hugo of St. Victor (qtd. in

Culture and Imperialism,

Edward Said)

Because culture changes, continually absorbing other cultural and

linguistic codes, we need to look at new ways to tell stories, newer ways to

approach ideas of family, love, relationships. Inside cultural codes, our desire

for self-fulfillment is an important aspect of how we negotiate identity,

translate our values and understand our life experiences. My interest in

hybridized identity and the creative connectivity present in code-switching

between cultures and languages is motivated by personal and pedagogical

interests. Therefore my concluding commentary branches out in two

directions: as a personal journey and professionally as a language teacher. In

both instances, my focus is on the connectivity between cultures and languages

as connectivity between people.

I view human contact as an exchange of energy and vibrations, a

spiritual connection which allows us to identify who we are by embracing

people around us. If “communities are to be distinguished, not by their

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falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” how desire

for difference(s) and how desire for Others are imagined may be understood

through Benedict Anderson’s vision of imagined communities (6). In these

imagined sites “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may

prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal

comradeship” (7). This idea of a horizontal comradeship implies a relational

connection between people therefore I understand it as Ricœurian – soi-même

comme un autre. Thus how we interconnect our spaces with Other spaces is an

important aspect of community, imagined or real. We must not forget that “the

world is a crowded place, and that if everyone were to insist on the radical

purity or priority of one’s own voice, all we would have would be the awful

din of unending strife” (Said xxi). Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult

to define groups as radically pure. In our desire to preserve and protect

cultures and languages, defending the platform of pure notions will not

disappear. However we need to ask ourselves how we can move forward from

this debate. Thus this thesis views code-switching as a necessary tool to move

forward. Creative connectivity, a fluid movement between languages and

cultures has value. Such movement is an acknowledgment and an acceptance

of the idea that

subjectivities and identities are constructed in multi-layered and

contradictory ways. Identity in this sense is seen not only as a historical

and social construction, but is also viewed as part of a continual

process of transformation and change (Giroux 207).

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We can also embrace this continual process of transformation and change

positively if we recognize (as I have done throughout this thesis) the

pedagogical and artistic value of code-switching and hybridized identification.

I have relied on Bhabha’s discourses between pedagogy and the

performative to broaden the definition of culture outside fixed zones of

national identity. In his essay, “Resisting Difference: Cultural Studies and the

Discourse of Critical Pedagogy”, Henry A. Giroux outlines four reasons why

cultural studies are important. I list them here as a way to trace, concretize and

summarize the value I have assigned to code-switching throughout this thesis.

a) Cultural studies are important to critical educators because it provides

the grounds for making a number of issues central to a radical theory of

schooling. First, it offers the basis for creating new forms of knowledge

by making language constitutive of the conditions for producing

meaning as part of the knowledge/power relationship.

b) Second, by defining culture as a contested terrain, a site of struggle and

transformation, cultural studies offers critical educators the opportunity

for going beyond cultural analyses that romanticize everyday life or

take up culture as merely the reflex of the logic of domination.

c) Third, cultural studies offer the opportunity to rethink the relationship

between the issues of difference as it is constituted within subjectivities

and between social groups.

d) Finally, cultural studies provides the basis for understanding pedagogy

as a form of cultural production rather than as the transmission of a

particular skill, body of knowledge, or set of values (201-202).

From the preceding references, the following points stand out: new forms of

knowledge, what constitutes a site of struggle and transformation, the

relationship between difference, subjectivities and social groups, and perhaps

most important the idea of pedagogy as a form of cultural production. This

means that we must, as Edward Said reminds us, move beyond simply

“learning about other cultures” focusing more on “studying the map of

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interactions, the actual and often productive traffic occurring ... among states,

societies, groups, identities” (20). My literary exploration of code-switching in

the selected works has been a small step towards a better understanding of the

complex yet meaningful process of how we might begin to “rejoin experience

and culture” by directing our attention “to read texts from the metropolitan

center and from the peripheries contra-punctually, according neither the

privilege of “objectivity” to “our side” nor the encumbrance of “subjectivity to

theirs” (259). To understand Other cultures and move fluidly between different

codes, it is imperative that we widen our selection of what should be read and

more importantly how it should be read (328). Said asks us to discard “right-

thinking response[s]” involving “newly empowered marginal groups” in

literatures that describe “the African [or Asian, or feminine] Proust” (328).

There is no contest in how we assign value to writers like Proust yet we must

remain open to new forms of expression, leaving behind the insecurity that “if

you tamper with the canon of Western literature you are likely to be promoting

the return of polygamy and slavery” (328). While there is a wider selection of

post-colonial literature in university curricula, immigrant/migrant literatures

need more visibility and study.

In his essay, “Diversity in the United States and Abroad: What Does It

Mean When American Studies Is Transnational?”, Emory Elliot asserts the

importance of focusing on Other literatures, “to turn attention to the way the

United States is interconnected inter-culturally, not only to Europe, but also to

Africa and Latin America” (8). Moreover he recognizes the value of “diasporic

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literature … rich in autobiographies and fictional narratives” (16). The selected

works in this thesis represent a modest beginning in how we may begin “to

understand [the] deeper psychological and emotional experiences” of

movement between cultures. We should not dismiss works of fiction in our

understanding of Others. “When people say that they do not read fiction

because it is not about real life, they deny themselves access to imagined

parallel worlds in which readers can vicariously encounter the intimate lives of

characters who are unlike themselves but are very much like real people” (16).

My exploration of Other literatures (fiction and autobiography) has

been a personal experience in as much as it has opened my eyes to issues of

how people negotiate identity from such different perspectives and angles.

Here is a re-cap of how the selected works are positioned in identity

negotiation in this thesis: Anzaldúa’s autohistoria is a Mexican/American

border theory narrative as much as it is a personal story about being a colonial

hybrid; Rodriguez’s autobiography is a narrative about repressed identity

issues inside a politicized and socially shifting period of American culture;

Hoffman’s autobiography is a trauma narrative as well as a quest for a new

Americanized/Polish identity. Kingston’s autobiography is a hybrid blend of

myth and lived experience, a re-scripting and empowerment of

Chinese/American feminine identity; Goto’s work of fiction is a reclaiming of

identity, a redefinition of bicultural voice; Laferrière’s work of fiction offers a

Pan-American vision of identity inside a racial and satirical discourse of black

and white stereotypes; Finally, D’Alfonso’s work of fiction illustrates multi-

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subjectivity as a natural consequence of immigration.The common thread in all

the works is a universal desire for inclusiveness that is genuine and respectful.

My experiences in Québec City over the last decade have led me to

continually interrogate what it means to seek such inclusiveness and how I

have drawn lines between fitting in and translating my minority Other

experience on my terms. By exploring Other literatures, the works in this

thesis have allowed me to broaden my vision and recognize, as Elliot points

out, “that there are few pedagogical activities more important for us to be

doing today than fostering international exchanges” (“Diversity in the United

States and Abroad: What Does It Mean When American Studies is

Transnational?” 8). As a teacher, I have become quite passionate about

educating my students in communicating and interacting effectively with

Other communities in Québec City. I believe such contact is an important

aspect of critical thinking because it involves students in a meaningful

exchange with Other cultures in their community. As educators if we “merely

… urge students to insist on one’s own identity, history, tradition, uniqueness”

it would be inadequate (Redinger 331). What is required is a relational vision

of such issues. We therefore “need to go on and situate these in a geography of

other identities, peoples, cultures, and then to study how, despite their

differences, they have always overlapped one another, through unhierarchical

influence, crossing corporation, recollection, deliberate forgetfulness, and, of

course, conflict” (331). When I think of my personal experiences of identity

negotiation in Québec City’s dominant population and its peripheral Other

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cultures, I must admit that I have dealt with some tension and at times

questioned how I fit in, both within the dominant frame and even its peripheral

spaces. My outsider position, a hybrid composition of different cultural codes,

has however allowed me to understand the importance of remaining curious,

open, and accepting of difference(s).

In her essay, “Corridors: Language as Trap and Meeting Ground”,

Angèle Denis, a young Québécoise francophone from Québec City speaks

about her experiences of living in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa/Hull. In

some ways, her experience translates my impressions of living in Quebec City.

Living in Quebec City has made me more aware of how passion and desire are

important elements of happiness. How we choose to interact with Others for

instance should be desire-based. As Denis points out “meeting others and

being elsewhere allow you to become conscious of your social and internal

Daedalus: of what you are and of what makes you who you are” (133). Living

passionately means embracing contradictions and different codes. Just as my

journey has been about rescripting my English Canadian voice and

Indian/Arabic experiences inside a French Canadian voice, Denis speaks of

how she has had to renegotiate a French Canadian voice inside the English

spaces of Toronto and the bilingual spaces of Montreal and Ottawa/Hull.

While I was disappointed to hear about some of the negative aspects of Denis’

experience in Toronto, it was an eye-opening revelation. It has allowed me to

understand how we can all, as Paterson states, become l’Autre. However Denis

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and I agree on one point: we need to remain open to language(s) and

culture(s).

Her view of translation as problematic corresponds with mine. Moving

to Toronto meant Denis had to “learn the local language” (134). Moreover for

Denis “having lived in English” in Toronto as I do in French in Quebec City

mean we “understand the loss of spontaneity that [sometimes] comes when”

we express ourselves in a “foreign idiom” (134). However neither of us can

dispute the value that comes from speaking in Canada’s official languages

fluently (in spite of the voids we sometimes experience because of differences

in cultural codes). I share in Denis’s view of language as a “marvelous tool …

to express visions, emotions, the world” (138). Perhaps the most appealing

aspect of movement between languages (code-switching) is in how it allows

people to “penetrate the ways in which others felt or saw the world” (138).

This idea of penetrating another person’s cultural and linguistic space

corresponds to my vision of intimate connections (a Barthesian relation

privilégiée), hybridized identification, and code-switching between spaces

promoted throughout this thesis. The outsider position I have sometimes felt in

Quebec City, Denis has experienced in Toronto, “sitting on a fence … no

longer a standard Québécois, yet in [English] Canada … [feeling] politically

marginal as Québécois and francophone” (138). She goes on to explain how

her move to Montreal was a more comfortable experience. She views Montreal

as

a city of possibilities, a place where some corridors were transgressed

and some walls shattered … where there was a third reality/way

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between French and English … where newcomers, refusing to be

confined to one or the other linguistic labyrinth, put bilingual messages

on their answering machines (140).

This third reality Denis speaks of I understand as inherently hybrid. For Denis

(and I share this view) “human life is about transgressing and transcending

borders, we all have to move within our own heads, to meet in new ways and

to consider the creation of spaces rather than barriers” (145). We need more

focus on transgressing and transcending borders – Barthesian in perspective.

We also require more ethical forms of creative connectivity between people,

languages, and cultures, where “true engagement and respect are … developed

and nurtured” (145). For such connectivity to exist, encouraging people to

code-switch between languages seems like an appropriate first step.

If we feel desire for spaces outside our cultural and linguistic zones of

identification (our spaces of comfort), then I believe we have, in some

respects, defeated racist thought. Having lived in India, Saudi Arabia, Dubai,

Ontario, and now in Québec, I have come to the realization that I am a

composite of many regional (and not national) identities. I therefore

understand my hybrid subjectivity as one shifting between spaces of local

Other cultures. As a result, the selected works in this thesis have been a source

of personal value. Each writer’s particular vision of identity has helped me

trace a more creative connectivity between how I understand my movement

between English and French cultural and linguistic codes in my daily reality

alongside the Indian and Arabic voices of my inner consciousness. I have also

come to understand and accept how cultural identification can be assigned to

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us through our external spaces by the way we allow such external spaces to

inhabit our subjectivity. There are certain markers of identity we cannot

escape: color, appearance with its labels of beauty, religion, age, language and

cultural codes that differentiate our way of thinking from another person. In

order to wear such markers with pride and dignity, we must accept some

responsibility for how we negotiate our particular process of identity

translation. We must not forget that

just as human beings make their own history, they also make their

cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting

continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national

languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except

fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and

distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact

is about the connections between things (Said 336).

This connection Said speaks of is something I strongly believe in. This thesis

has therefore been an important process in how I understand and apply Said’s

desire for such connection in my personal and professional spaces. This does

not mean that I do not recognize value in traditions, cultural and linguistic

origins. I believe that community belonging promotes better self-esteem.

However I also understand, as Said points out in the preceding quotation, how

our connection between people is a critical aspect of respect, desire, and

admiration of Other codes. Throughout this thesis I have thus focused on

hybridized identification (in spite of its challenges) as a source of value.

Does hybrid identification offer better connectivity between people?

A Barthesian relation privilégiée

I share in D’Alfonso’s, Goto’s and Anzaldúa’s desire to move fluidly

between languages and cultures. I understand community and society as

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ethical spaces of love. By this I mean that we need to engage more intimately

with people around us. We have a tendency to interact with family and friends

who resemble us. Inadvertently we draw lines around our identity by

negotiating who we are inside familiar, fixed, cultural and linguistic spaces.

By broadening our circle, we can then embrace and accept that “The New

Immigrant is as much the name of a figure as the Native Informant” (Spivak

394). We can thus invite people into Anderson’s imagined community, a space

Spivak imagines through figures “woven in the folds of a text” (394). The text

provides a testing ground to imagine/reshape ourselves and others. As Spivak

points out, “a figure makes visible the impossible, it also invites the

imagination to transform the impossible into an experience, a role” (394).

Doris Sommer’s vision of cultural and linguistic code-switching as creative

play effectively illustrates this idea of imagination and how value is dependent

on how we engage with Other languages and cultures. How we interact with

Others determines the effectiveness of code-switching and how we form

relationships with people outside our cultural and linguistic spaces of

identification. The ability to code-switch would remove, or at the very least

weaken, the strongest obstacle that separates people – fear.

Moving away from such fear brings me to how Spivak grounds her

definition of ecological justice “inside a learning of world visions” (383).

According to Spivak, “learning can only be attempted through the

supplementation of collective effort by love. What deserves the name of love

is an effort ... which is slow, attentive [my emphasis] on both sides” (383).

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This collective effort Spivak mentions can also be understood through

Laferrière’s Pan-American vision of identity because he understands and

defines identity outside geographic borders therefore collectivity is not defined

inside one geographic space. In my opinion, less emphasis should be attached

to geographic and homogenized cultural spaces and more importance given to

cultural and linguistic connections. This world is increasingly transnational (to

borrow from Spivak) so the movement of people between cities and countries

demands more focus. We must learn how we can bridge gaps between

difference, how we can tackle zones of hybridization inside communities

(412). I do not believe that an individual’s loyalty to place should be exclusive

to his or her place of birth. Just as an individual is influenced and shaped by

Other cultures, so too can s/he be defined through different cities and

countries. Like Laferrière, I feel that place should inhabit the person, that

attachment between person and place should be as intimately reciprocal as a

relationship between two people – a Barthesian relation privilégiée. Moreover

Laferrière’s romance/shifting allegiance between the spaces of Paris, Miami

and Montréal illustrates the global connectivity and attachment of hybridized

identification I address in this thesis.

Regional spaces promote citizenship and selfhood in more hybrid terms

than national ones. To emphasize this point, I would select D’Alfonso’s vision

of Montreal and his belief that “conscious identities” are based on “free

choice” (D’Alfonso qtd. in Chanady 12). However Amaryll Chanady points

out that “positive multiple identity may not be accessible to everyone,

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especially to those belonging to a visible minority” (Chanady 33). I therefore

agree with Chanady’s observation that being visibly different blurs or

compromises a negotiation of conscious identities since those who are visibly

different do not have the same free choice to define their multiple selves.

Laferrière’s desire to embrace regional city spaces as intimately as his

protagonist embraces sexuality is another example of a positive model of free

choice. His parody of Black and White roles however is only a symbolic

illustration of how he takes possession of spaces that may otherwise

marginalize him as a Black man.

Free choice in this context does not seem to be an option for

Rodriguez. He explains how his visibly different appearance (his dark skin)

marginalizes him and impedes him from gaining full entry as an American.

For Rodriguez, the pressures to conform to mainstream visions of identity (in

the 1960s and 1970s) and assimilate into an Americanized identity were

strong. However we must not forget that

hybridization is not the “free” oscillation between or among chosen

identities. It is the uneven process through which immigrant

communities encounter the … capital imperatives served by the United

States and by the Asian states [and French and English Canadian

spaces] from which they come, and the process through which they

survive … by living, inventing, and reproducing different cultural

alternatives (Lowe 82).

Thankfully today’s environment in North America (for the most part) offers

more freedom in how people challenge negative forms of cultural containment.

Rodriguez wishes to empower his American public voice because he

views empowerment as an American cultural tool, one that his Mexican

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culture cannot give him. His public voice is an illustration of a particular form

of empowerment not present in the other works. Rodriguez views his

commitment to American culture and to his “future as someone who grew up

in California” whose vision is therefore more American than it is Mexican

(Marzán 47). Learning English as a child meant distance from Spanish

therefore writing about his life experiences as an adult means that Rodriguez

cannot allow readers a deeper exploration or even understanding of his private

thoughts on what it means to be a Mexican, Spanish-speaking immigrant.

After reading J.A. Marzán’s “The Art of Being Richard Rodriguez” I found

myself retracing my first impressions of Rodriguez (45). While Rodriguez’s

narrative suggests that hybridized identity is a precarious position, he also

contradicts himself, thus destabilizing how readers grasp the intent behind his

words. For instance, he tells Marzán he no longer views himself as a minority,

stating that his “students chose to live in the past …. They were minority

because they clung to Spanish” (48). However in Hunger he speaks about his

private family life and how his move away from Spanish was a deep loss.

Moreover the anger he displays when he hears Marzán speaking to his wife on

the telephone in Spanish is also a sign of Rodriguez’s contradictions (48).

Another compelling point is Rodriguez’s response to some of the choices he

has made, visible in how he chooses to respond to Marzán questions. For

instance when Marzán asks: “You completed your undergraduate and graduate

studies on minority scholarships, so why did you put down other Chicano

students because they received financial aid?” Rodriguez replies: “I had

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accepted the aid out of necessity, but I am still opposed to giving minorities

special scholarships” (53). He admits he is “being contradictory” when he

accepts such aid thus illustrating acquiescence to a system of scholarship he

does not respect (54). It is why I do not understand his criticism of other

minority students who accepted the same benefits he did. Social and economic

disparities are indeed dragons that breathe fire over many citizens who live on

the peripheries of a dominant culture. He admits that he “was no longer like

socially disadvantaged Hispanic-Americans [admitting in the same breath how

this brings him] a greater degree of success ... [because as a] published

minority student ... [he] won a kind of celebrity” (55). Marzán points to

Rodriguez’s denial of his Hispanic American culture on the one hand and how

on the other hand he boasts (rather cynically) about “becoming a nationally

applauded minority writer” (55). I understand his cynicism as a marker of the

cultural duality Rodriguez cannot escape. He may have chosen to remove

himself from his Hispanic culture because of the distance he suffers with his

father and his siblings because they do not fully accept his homosexuality (57).

As I understand it, such disapproval from family members pushes Rodriguez

even further inside zones of public space. Ironically, he does not distance

himself from the Catholic religion, a public space that refuses to acknowledge

or accept homosexuality. I do not criticize this decision, however it seems at

odds with some of Rodriguez’s other choices. I offer this more detailed

retrospective view of Rodriguez here (in comparison with the works) because I

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understand his autobiographical story as an illustration of the negative impact

of repressed desires.

As I mention in my introduction, in spite of Rodriguez’s American

assimilation, his hybridized hues seep through. However his narrative style sits

in opposition to Anzaldúa’s openly hybrid negotiation of identity. Moreover,

Anzaldúa’s desire to embrace her Mexican border identity, her pedagogical

and political discourses as well as her linguistic hybridity illustrates her pride

and high level of self-esteem. Building “psychological and spiritual borders ...

[are] integral … [of the hybridized] Chicano creative process” (Câliz-Montoro

11). Rodriguez’s disengagement with his Chicano roots is, in my opinion, the

root cause of his contradictory and arrogant knee-jerk responses/reactions with

interviewers like Marzán. I therefore understand Rodriguez’s narrative as a

repressed trauma narrative.

Kingston’s desire for free choice is another complex process of

identity negotiation. Her use of talk-story to re-invent herself along with her

mixing of myth and lived experience has been a source of criticism. Her most

scathing critic has been Frank Chin, notably for referring to Kingston as a:

“white racist genius” (Chin 27). He accuses her of defending her “revision of

Chinese history, culture, and childhood literature and myth by restating a white

racist stereotype” (29). Even the title of his article expresses his level of

contempt: “Come All ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake”.

Clearly Chin’s view is that writers like Kingston (and Amy Tan) have betrayed

their cultural heritage. However as Lowe points out “perhaps one of the most

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important stories of Asian American experience is about the process of

critically receiving and rearticulating cultural traditions in the face of a

dominant national culture that exoticizes and “orientalizes” Asians” (65).

Kingston re-scripts her voice as Chinese/American to empower an oriental

image of who she is outside dominant and minority positions. Lowe reminds

us that “cultural identity is not an essence but positioning” (Stuart Hall qtd. in

Lowe 83). Kingston repositions herself by mixing fact with myth to empower

her Chinese/American voice. Her decision to re-script myth is a tool of

empowerment. It should not be read as a promotion of stereotypes. Rather we

should view Kingston’s narrative (along with her narrative technique) as “a

new form of female self” (Ahokas 107). Moreover, Lowe cites the 1990s in

the United States as a period “to include a more heterogeneous group and to

enable crucial alliances – with other groups of color, class-based struggles,

feminist coalitions, and sexuality-based efforts – in the ongoing work of

transforming hegemony” (83). Kingston’s desire to re-script old stories in new

ways allows her to empower her marginalized voice. She “uses the mythic

form to reflect her hard situation as a woman in the traditionally patriarchal

Chinese society, and to show that there exists a way of challenging its

marginalizing assumptions” (Cobos 19). The mythic form also allows

Kingston to question old stereotypes and “come to terms with her American

self” – a hybrid Chinese/American voice (19).

In her autobiography, Hoffman speaks openly about her intimate

experiences as an immigrant in North America and how she comes to terms

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with her parents’ Polish traumatic war experiences. Moreover Hoffman’s

desire to speak her adopted language intimately by making linguistic and

cultural comparisons with Polish allows her to define her American identity in

more empowered ways than Rodriguez. Mastering English “becomes a matter

of [negotiating a more intimate] existence” (Ingram 272). Hoffman’s desire to

embrace language intimately becomes paramount in how she redefines herself.

Rodriguez experiences private loss when he has to give up Spanish, referring

to English as his public language. Hoffman on the other hand expresses a

desire to adopt English as privately as she speaks Polish. She refers to her loss

of Polish as “the loss of [a] living connection” (Hoffman 107). Hoffman

translates her life experiences poetically. For Hoffman “representation without

the expressional is not satisfying” (Eriksson 8). This idea of expressional

representation is an aspect that is visible in Goto’s narrative style as well.

Guy Beauregard refers to her writing as playful subversive self-

fashioning. Such terms situate her work alongside Kingston’s re-scripting of

myth. “Despite their different national and ethnic locations, Goto and Hong

Kingston share a diasporic position in which neither writer has direct access to

“authentic” traditional culture” (Beauregard 49). Like Kingston, Goto’s

narrative style is a hybrid mix of story and myth – a revoicing of tradition on

their terms. Thus reinvention is an important tool in how Goto and Kingston

recreate bicultural voices (Japanese/Canadian and Chinese/American). Like

Hoffman, Goto also illustrates a desire to poetically play with language. In this

way, they promote code-switching inside language.

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Barthesian Jouissance and Cultural Play

As I mention in my introduction, music is an excellent example of

hybrid value. Just as powerful as sexual and linguistic play, there is a

Barthesian element of jouissance in music because today’s music encourages

artists to transgress borders by mixing different genres. Moreover linguistic

hybridity in songs like "Femme Like U (Donne-moi ton corps)" by Canadian

artist K.Maro (Cyril Kamar) offers an interesting illustration of hybrid desire.

K. Maro often mixes French and English lyrics sometimes even adding Arabic.

Another example is Kylie Minogue’s song "Chiggy Wiggy" featuring Sonu

Nigam and Suzanne D’Mello. This song moves between English and Hindi

lyrics more fluidly therefore it is a better example of lyrical code-switching

than K. Maro’s scattering of English words inside French lyrics. However I

include both (there are many more) as examples because they complement the

idea of desire as Barthesian jouissance. Another example of creative play is

hybrid humor because "like hybridity, humour also rests on an exchange,

usually between two positions" (Dunphy and Emig 25). In my opinion, humor

is one of the most difficult forms of code-switching. It requires a very intimate

understanding of cultural codes. Thus I would argue that the hybrid occupies a

position of great privilege when s/he can step inside an arena of cultural humor

that moves between codes. If we understand "cultures as overlapping circles

… communities can meet in the intersection, but only the hybrid can move

easily throughout the full diameter of both" (30). By looking at culture outside

a political arena of nation and understanding culture and language interactions

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in the same way as love-based sexual attractions between people (a Barthesian

jouissance), as musical mixing, and as humorous plays, the value of code-

switching and hybridized identification increases exponentially. For instance,

"jokes are first and foremost linguistic performances that require the

recognition of an existing code and then its variation all the way to the

transgression and violation as merely playful, in fact as the shift or switch to

yet another set of norms and rules" (Barthes, Fragments d’un discours

amoureux 27). The idea of transgression and violation as merely playful in

linguistic expressions of humor does not accurately complete our

understanding of identity negotiation. "Obviously, race, ethnic, and language

identities intersect with social class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, age, and

other demographic characteristics to form the complex, multiple, dynamic, and

contingent identities that we all have" (James and Shadd 2). However humor,

particularly hybrid humor (like music), is a creative tool of expression training

us to be more flexible in how we share and absorb cultural codes. Through our

ability to laugh at cultural (mis)understandings we can also lighten tensions

and perhaps approach zones of conflict more openly.

Social media is another growing reality of today’s hybrid culture.

Networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter instantly connect people from

different cultures and countries. They have become a reality of how today’s

generation meets, greets and socializes with others. Exchanging phone

numbers has been replaced by demands for Facebook friendships just as

texting has replaced phone conversations. In this era of electronic exchanges,

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desire for Other cultures and languages (especially with high school and

college-aged students) has increased. I view this shift in how we socialize as a

validation of hybrid desires because social media brings together people from

all walks of life thus bridging gaps between cultural codes. Today, people

exchange music, pictures, news stories, enter political and philosophical

discussions as easily as they flirt and chat. While it may be a less intimate

form of communication and connection, such giant chat-rooms encourage

creative connectivity between people. They allow people to participate in

Bhabha’s discourses of pedagogy and the performative because people can

instantly exchange personal stories and recreate themselves as they wish. I

understand the value of Facebook as « un lieu privilégié à soi et à l’autre … à

chacun d’être vivant et désirant » (Marzano 19). In as much as Facebook and

texting is every teacher’s nightmare because students are so easily distracted

by such media in the classroom, there is creative value in social media that

cannot be disputed. Moreover, social media allows individuals to share

information (sometimes before newspapers and journalists have had a chance

to evaluate how and if they will publicize certain stories) freely across cultures

and geographic borders. Therefore media networks have less time to react and

organize how they choose to share information with the public. This creates an

environment of freer access to information, one outside the regulations and

constraints of media-related political and social plays.

Looking at social media from another, less optimistic angle, we see its

more invasive, even dangerous, side. The recent language debate in Québec

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over French signage went viral almost immediately receiving worldwide

media attention illustrating how social media can sometimes negatively

connect us with the world. Facebook posts and Twitter feeds allowed people to

instantly access local news thus removing an important filter of privacy we

once had. How a local culture chooses to include or exclude its neighbors in

their lives is no longer limited by how journalists and television choose to

report/broadcast information. Today, any individual can distribute information

using social media, creating an instant outward spiraling effect. So while

public media may seem invasive in how it sensationalizes news stories, I

would argue that social media is more invasive because it allows people to

subjectively and instantly sensationalize stories from the comfort of their

personal home computers and smart phones.

For instance, the latest pastagateix buzz in Montréal created by the

OQLF’s (Office québécois de la langue française) mandate to enforce French

signage has ruffled feathers. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter made

it impossible to contain public exchanges and limit the sharing of opinions,

illustrating how our process of exchanging information has radically changed.

The average Joe’s commentary feed facilitates, sometimes negatively, the

sharing of ideas and opinions. Information is instantly accessible to friends and

friends of friends in different networks, cities, and countries around the world.

Without entering into the pros and cons of the OQLF’s decision and rationale

behind their language policing, I would simply argue that as we move towards

a more globalized market, culturally and economically, such connectivity with

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the world puts into perspective rather quickly how self-defeating information

sharing can sometimes be. It is however a reminder of how powerful our

global networking systems have become and it is perhaps a wake-up call about

how we need to find value in interconnected spaces. From a global perspective

it is difficult for people outside a particular cultural arena to objectively

understand local politics, social climates or issues.

I understand the signage debate as an aesthetic and cultural issue rather

than a linguistic battle. I bring it up here because I believe that it is an

important example that favors code-switching as I promote it in this thesis. In

cities such as Montréal being bilingual even trilingual is a growing reality.

Therefore it seems quite unrealistic to believe that Other codes will not bleed

into and infect the lining of Québec’s French cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic

fabric. I believe that such bleeding should be accepted, even welcomed.

However this acceptance need not result in a weakening of a distinct

francophone personality for Québec. We need less focus on tolerance and

more emphasis on an acceptance of difference(s). In my opinion, learning to

effectively code-switch between cultures and languages should be part of this

process of acceptance because “genuine inclusiveness and broad international

collaboration are especially crucial to our work in the twenty-first century”

(Elliot 6). History has taught us that neither culture nor language is static. Thus

how we consume and understand culture and language must be a site of

continual transformation. While we are instinctively attracted by difference we

are conditioned to be with people who share our customs and habits. We take

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comfort from such connections in the same way we crave our mothers when

we are sick, enjoy romping around at home in our favorite pyjamas or

following the same daily routines. As creatures of habit, we tend to choose life

partners and jobs that mirror our cultural codes. (The Fido advertisement of

owner and dog that look alike is an interesting satirical example.) In spite of

our tendency to move towards what is familiar, this thesis names desire for

difference as inherently valuable. Breaking rules and accepted norms of

behavior promote Barthesian jouissance and validate Sommer’s creative play.

Elliot’s desire for transnational studies seems like an appropriate way to make

jouissance and creative play realities rather than just literary expressions of

joy. He asks: “How can we, through our teaching and research, more

effectively generate developments that will lead to thoughtful citizenship and

to a more humane future?” (5) Perhaps a greater emphasis on multilingual

education is one answer.

Multilingual Education: Desire for Other Codes

As the cultural makeup of our North American populations continues

to grow and change so must the parameters of its education system. I would

therefore argue that a focus on migrant writers and code-switching should

occupy a more dominant place in college and university literary curricula.

Daniel Redinger’s Ph.D. on (the principality of) Luxembourg offers an

interesting study of multilingual education, albeit as an international

perspective outside the North American focus of this thesis. Moving out of

literary zones of code-switching into models that illustrate its benefits and

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challenges inside spaces of pedagogical identification illustrates code-

switching in more real terms. Why do I focus on this model (rather than

Canadian or American ones) of multilingual education? There are a number of

studies and research available on the advantages of bilingual education in

North American cities. My decision to focus on the “language situation in

Luxembourg [developed because it] has been described as ‘triglossic’ [my

emphasis] … with regard to the country’s official recognition of

Luxembourgish, French and German” (Redinger 22). In Luxembourg, “thirty

to 40 percent of school lessons are dedicated to language teaching” (22). This

model is therefore a particularly important and interesting illustration of why

we can no longer think of language inside socio-cultural vacuums or as an

option of elite education. While language is the principal marker of cultural

difference, culture is not homogeneous. Moreover the multilingual education

model in Luxembourg supports the idea of linguistic mobility as a viable

solution for an effective integration between peripheral and dominant groups.

In this way, it implicitly speaks in favor of how I place value on code-

switching in this thesis. Redinger classifies multilingual language learning into

three elements: “code-switching for curriculum access, code-switching for

management of classroom discourse and code-switching for interpersonal

relations” (29). In his socio-linguistic study, he explains how

35 to 40 percent of school lessons are dedicated to language teaching at

primary and secondary school level. German and French are

compulsory languages throughout schooling. English is introduced as a

foreign language at secondary school level where students can also opt

to study Latin, Italian and Spanish. German and French are employed

as languages of instruction at different levels in the curriculum.

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German is the language of alphabetisation and is mostly employed as a

medium of instruction throughout primary education and the first years

of secondary schooling (41).

Such models of multilingual education (or bilingual systems of education)

deserve more focus. “Education emerges as a particularly important domain

for the study of language attitudes as it has been shown that language attitudes

can considerably influence students’ academic achievements and career

opportunities” (54). The idea of how we communicate becomes even more

important when pedagogy is approached from a bilingual or multilingual point

of view. For instance, the distinction between “situational switching” and

“metaphorical switching” is important (59). The first form is activity-based

whereas the second one is employed “to add cultural flavor to a joke or

meaning” (59). While this notion of metaphorical switching resembles

Sommer’s model of an aesthetic bilingual education, it goes further.

Daniel Redinger’s Ph.D. thesis, a study of multilingual education in

Luxembourg, frames my position that there is value in code-switching between

languages and cultures. It is also a creative reflection of identity politics

because it favors a more intimate contact between individuals. Speaking

several languages creates opportunities to communicate more creatively.

Although Redinger explains how multilingual societies such as Luxembourg

come with their particular set of challenges, this is partly due to the fact that

“academic research focusing on Luxembourg’s linguistic situation is ‘still in

embryo’ and [Redinger] attributes this lack of research to the absence of a

university in Luxembourg until 2003” (22). In North American cities such as

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Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Miami, San Francisco (to name a

few) minority groups continue to grow in numbers. I believe it is therefore

time to focus more on models such as Luxembourg. To avoid, or minimize the

negative aspects of such multilingual models of society, research needs to

focus on more triglossic (rather than simply bilingual) models of education.

The benefits of bilingual education are difficult to dispute.x I therefore believe

that multilingual education is a model that best illustrates the cosmopolitan

reality of urban cities across Canada, the United States and the world (even

though it continues, for now, to be a choice available to those in positions of

higher socio-economic classes).xi In addition, such research needs to focus on

the importance of promoting and preserving minority languages within the

framework of dominant cultures and their languages. In this way, cultural and

linguistic pride can prevail inside minority groups. If we look at Mother

tongue-based instruction we can understand how language plays a critical role

in identity construction. In her paper, “Enhancing Learning of Children from

Diverse Language Backgrounds: Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual or

Multilingual Education in The Early Years,” Jessica Ball explores the value of

“maintaining the world’s languages and cultures by promoting and resourcing

mother tongue-based education for young children” (5). The importance of

continuity of language and cultural heritage are definitely a challenge for

second and future generation immigrants. Many factors will determine how

such continuity can take place. Ball explores issues of socio-economic status,

access to schools as well as the status of the mother tongue within the

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dominant society in her article (6). For immigrants, the pressing question and

challenge will be in the recognition of the mother tongue during preschool and

primary school years (7). Rodriguez is a good example of how the absence of

such recognition in his childhood had negative impacts. Ball’s report

concludes that “children learn best in their mother tongue as a prelude to and

complement of bilingual and multilingual education” (7). Rodriguez’s

separation from Spanish at a young age then is a strong example of how

linguistic loss equals cultural loss. Language and culture are crucial elements

of how identity patterns are formed in children.

As a country that promotes itself as bilingual, with two official

languages (English and French), Canada is positioned to explore Ball’s

findings and develop mother tongue-based education schools, especially in

urban cities where immigrant populations continue to grow. As religious

accommodation continues to occupy political and social agendas (see

Quebec’s recent Values Charter), I believe that we should invest our time and

energy in linguistic-based research. This would positively favor multilingual

populations. Through Redinger’s and Ball’s work we can understand the

importance of creating a society that educates its citizens in dominant and

Other languages in more inclusive and exact ways. We need language study

that works to incorporate “practical, political, and economical” value into its

curricula (11). There will always be battles of “legal authority” and “choice of

language” promotion however I think it would be difficult for policy makers to

argue against the value of multilingual education in the wake of globalized

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world markets. Few can deny that “language is not only a tool for

communication and knowledge but also a fundamental attribute of cultural

identity and empowerment, both for the individual and the group” (13).

Educational strategies that privilege official languages while promoting Other

mother tongues by including such languages in their curricula are an important

aspect of how well Other communities will function and integrate into their

host, dominant cultures. I believe, as Ball points out, that “learning another

language opens up access to other value systems and ways of interpreting the

world, encouraging inter-cultural understanding and helping reduce

zenophobia” (14).

Redinger’s thesis and Luxembourg as a model of multilingual

education are therefore a valid and important choice in how I illustrate the

value of code-switching in this thesis. Multilingual education policies promote

more cohesively connected communities. Moreover Ball’s vision of an

“additive approach to bilingualism” is in my opinion a more favorable model

than simply having children learn their “second language as a language of

instruction” (14). While immersion programs have great value, they do create

challenges in how well first languages will be mastered. If children’s

“cognitive flexibility” and “metalinguistic awareness” develop from a young

age, it seems reasonable to conclude that their ability to effectively move

between cultural codes will be stronger than someone who learnt Other

languages later in life or grew up in a monolingual environment (19). When I

speak of creative connectivity between cultures and languages, my focus is

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primarily on how such connectivity promotes more intimate desire and

acceptance between individuals and groups. As stated previously, Quebec’s

immigrants, for instance those in Montreal, face different challenges living

between two official languages than Canadian immigrants in other cities. For

such immigrants, multilingual positioning is critical.

Many linguists, psychologists, and educators argue that respecting

learners’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds in educational settings is

crucial in fostering their self-confidence as persons and community

members, and in encouraging them to be active and competent leaders

(24).

The preceding quotation may be taken as another point in favor of code-

switching. Unfortunately, the greatest challenge for bilingual and multilingual

education programs remains in restrictions based on “socio-economic status”

and “socio-linguistic status” as well as “a dire need for research on effective

mother tongue-based education” (25). According to Ball’s research, “engaging

parents and other caregivers more actively in children’s development and

learning and working with linguistically and culturally diverse children are

two areas that have been identified [by UNESCO] as lagging behind” (41). If

this is true then a more active communication and connectivity between

different caregivers and educators are required. A larger linguistic variety of

first-language teachers are also needed in our education system. Of course

political will and economic gain (two points Ball raises) will continue to

dominate and dictate how multilingual education policies will be implemented

(44).

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Dominant groups will invariably view the minority groups’ presence

(especially if pedagogical policies and societal values are adversely affected)

as a threat to the continuity of their cultural and linguistic identity. Thus how

host communities choose to integrate Other groups into the dominant culture

plays a critical role in how both sides communicate and respectfully co-exist. I

believe that further study of multilingual education curricula should be more of

a focus in our research topics. I therefore propose such studies as an important

continuation of code-switching research. “For … [any] minority language to

survive, it must have separate and distinct uses in society” (Redinger 86).

French immersion schools in English Canada are good examples, in my

opinion, in how they encourage Anglophone students to speak their second

language. Based on my experiences in Toronto and at the University of

Toronto, I found that immersion students who were in my French classes had

distinctly stronger communication skills in French than those (like myself)

who learned their second language as an adult. It is therefore difficult for me to

dispute Redinger’s study which clearly favors multilingual education.

Living in Québec City has increased my inner pride for all the places,

cultures and languages that have defined and continue to define who I am.

Living here has also made me painfully aware of my linguistic losses because

as Redinger points out, “although language separation can be easily controlled

in an educational context, it is ‘uncontrollable within the mind’” (86). While

regret is futile, I sincerely view the loss of Arabic and Urdu (my childhood

languages) as significant markers of cultural distance as well. This loss has

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influenced how I have interpreted Rodriguez in this thesis. I therefore

understand the value behind Québec’s desire for linguistic and cultural

preservation. However I believe that effective preservation and protection of

language and culture means better education policies and democratic (not

restrictive) language laws. In this vein, I view multilingual education as an

effective tool to validate code-switching as it has been promoted in this thesis.

Moreover, I frame multilingual education inside Bhabha’s discourses between

pedagogy and the performative. In Redinger’s study we learn that

students from immigrant backgrounds engage more extensively in

multilingual language practices outside the educational context than

their Luxembourgish peers who almost exclusively employ

Luxembourgish as a medium of communication at home and with

friends. However, students from the various immigrant communities

also frequently speak Luxembourgish with friends as well as with

members of their family at home (156).

In those instances where immigrants hold on to their language of origin yet

engage in intimate relationships with people from their host city in their

dominant language, I believe they forge stronger cultural and patriotic ties

with their adopted country. By speaking their language of origin as well as

their adopted language(s) immigrants position themselves inside a Barthesian

relation privilégiée. They have a more expansive and inclusive sense of

cultural and linguistic pride. The cultural identity of the host population would

gain more aesthetic (Doris Sommer) value if it favored multilingual education.

In my opinion, in those instances when host cultures can seek creative

connectivity with people from Other cultures by communicating in Other

languages then the host population would be more empathetically and

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creatively equipped to address the challenges that are created in cosmopolitan

spaces. However I am aware that such a position of multilingual education

invariably touches upon issues of national identity. Therefore I would suggest

we promote code-switching through Laferrière’s vision of Pan-American

identity. Thus we should approach identity negotiation as a superimposed

(along Stabinger’s idea of superimposed selves) building block of regional and

cultural identities.

In his essay “The Road Between Essentialism: For an Italian Culture in

Quebec and Canada”, D’Alfonso’s vision as poet supports the desire for

connectivity between cultural spaces and code-switching this thesis promotes.

The poet has “a space large enough to cover the hiatus between two worlds, a

space which can serve as an intersection for different realities” (Pivato,

Contrasts 215). D’Alfonso’s poetic playground resembles Sommer’s idea of

creative play reconciling “that which is [not easily reconciled] in his reality …

to re-invent a way of expressing himself” (216). Moreover what I particularly

value in D’Alfonso’s vision of identity is his desire for inclusivity inside

Italian, Québécois, and Canadian literature: “If Italian writers in Canada and

Quebec want to leave their indelible traces on our culture they must study and

absorb Italian literary tradition as well as English and French” (220). In her

essay, “Land to Light On”, Sherry Simon voices the contradictory role critics

face in Canada. On the one hand, they express their “desire to document the

diversity of voices in Canadian literature” (19). On the other hand, they also

wish to “explore the individuality of writers and to understand their often

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difficult relationship to their communities” (19). Clearly attention in both areas

is necessary. Our educational institutions are perhaps the best places for such

exploration. If, from an early age, students are taught about migrant literatures

and the acquisition of language(s) is an integral aspect of their curriculum, as

adults I believe they would be better equipped to navigate freely between

different codes and enjoy more respectful connections with people from Other

cultural and linguistic communities.

An important obstacle in multilingual education is its perceived threat

to host language(s). Just as fidelity is an ambiguous term in intimate

relationships, it is an equally contentious one in language issues. My thesis has

explored creative connectivity and code-switching between languages as a

Barthesian relation privilégiée, thus promoting an intimate connection

between people, a fluid movement between cultural and linguistic codes.

Sommer links communication between languages as a Barthesian jouissance

and what I name linguistic foreplay. The parallel between sexual and linguistic

pleasure may also be understood as an expression of infidelity. In her book La

fidelité ou l’amour à vif, Michela Marzano defines fidelity as « extrêmement

ambigu … à propos de l’amour et de l’amitié, mais aussi quand il est question

de valeurs, de promesses, de souvenirs, de traductions » (11). She divides the

idea of fidelity into the following three parts: vertu sociale (respecter les

engagements), vertu théologale (l’alliance sacrée entre Dieu et les hommes) et

vertu privée (une qualité de relation à soi-même et à autrui). I am interested in

la vertu privée because it illustrates the same vision of interdependence

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between Self and Other as Ricœur. Marzano defines her reference of Self and

Other as a position where : « celui qui va vers l’autre porte toujours en soi

quelque chose de mystérieux, de secret, d’en fou … il vient d’un ailleurs …

jamais complètement disponible … face à une absence [ou présence qui est]

… à la fois le sien et celui de l’autre » (139). Just like Bhabha’s hybrid,

Marzano’s model of the Other shifts between zones of inclusion and

exclusion, knowing and not knowing. Moreover Bhabha’s discourses between

pedagogy and the performative can be applied to Marzano’s model of fidelity.

Any movement that takes one individual into new spaces of identification can

be viewed as pedagogical in how it instructs individuals about difference and

acceptance. Similarly, new spaces of identification and desire are attractive

because of the mystery that surrounds them. How individuals navigate

between such spaces is an illustration of the performative Bhabha speaks of in

his discussion of nation.

Code-Switching: Desire for Others

Cosmopolitan spaces such as Montreal are interesting models from

which to define and identify the value of code-switching between cultures and

languages. While Quebec City is still made up of a majority white francophone

population, the immigrant population has grown over the last five years and

indicators suggest that more immigrants will continue to move here. I am

therefore particularly intrigued and pleased by the change of attitudes I have

witnessed from students in my classes towards new immigrants. In the last

three years, I have noticed a tangible improvement. This new generation

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(between 17 and 20 of age) is more open and interested in Other cultures.

Moreover these students express a genuine desire to intimately interact with

their immigrant population. This openness is unfortunately not something that

I always sense with adults in the post-university age group, generally 30+

years of age. My observations here are based exclusively on my personal

experiences in Québec City over the last decade and while I do not speak of

overt racism or discrimination, I view a guarded tolerance or reluctance when

exchanges with Others shift into more intimate zones. I base such conclusions

on personal interactions and impressions shared with other minority groups in

my networks. In spite of this reluctance in adults, I find the change in student

attitudes very encouraging. In order to steer this new generation towards a

stronger desire for Other cultures and languages, I feel strongly that we must

include more creative examples of cultural and linguistic connectivity in

academic curricula. Consequently I have steered my classroom curriculum (as

much as it is possible inside the pedagogical objectives of each course) to

include material that promotes a better understanding of Other cultural codes

and how we might exchange with Others more effectively inside the

context/base of Québécois culture.

As a result, many of my lesson plans draw upon such issues as First

Nations, Black History, immigrant issues, etc. Unfortunately, such topics are

not a focus in many high school curricula in Quebec City therefore students

entering college programs have little knowledge of, or no background on,

these subjects. In some program specific courses offered through the Arts and

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Letters program, I have more liberty with curriculum choice. I therefore

include a substantial segment on cultural diversity. For instance, such topics as

the origins of blues and jazz in North & South America offer students a great

illustration of how culture has dictated subsequent musical genres. Music is an

excellent tool to stimulate student interest for Other cultures. Moreover, music

is one of the best examples of code-switching and how we assign value to

language(s). An artistic education (and I include language in this category) in

music, theater, dance, etcetera, feeds and energizes our spirit promoting more

openness towards cultural diversity. In the last two years I have organized jazz

related conferences and music shows for my students. It has been a new

approach (first of its kind at my college) and a different model of instruction

for students to learn about Black history, slavery and the role music has played

and continues to play in translating cultural identity. Today’s music in North

and South America can be traced back to West African gospel, blues and jazz

sounds. I am proud to say that the music shows and conferences I have

organized have been an effective strategy in teaching students about Black

culture while illustrating how music and language(s) are hybrid products of

culture(s).

Just as I view music as a cultural dance, I understand immigrant contact

with host citizens as code-switching – a hybrid dance of creative connectivity.

My students express a strong desire to intimately interact with immigrants. I

view their interest as a valuable way for immigrants to integrate into the

dominant culture. As a member of the minority immigrant population in

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Québec City, I am quite fascinated by their curiosity and genuine interest in

immigrant populations. Consequently, I feel that language learning should

include such interactions with Other cultures whenever possible. For instance,

in some of my classes, students have the opportunity to meet new immigrants

in les cours de francisation as part of their curriculum requirements. Such

exchanges encourage students to participate in Bhabha’s discourses between

pedagogy and the performative in ways that benefit their process of

identification while promoting better intercultural relationships in their

community. Today, students (especially here in North America) are sometimes

labeled spoiled, self-indulgent individuals who expect to receive a lot while

contributing little. This may describe some students however there are

fortunately many others who work hard and express a genuine desire for

learning and ethical participation in their communities. As a teacher, I feel

privileged when I come across such individuals because I believe it is an

honour to be part of their learning processes. Students today have a stronger

voice in public, cultural, spaces.

Whether in Chongquin, China, or Riverside, California … with their

computers, cell phones, iPods, fluent English, and knowledge of global

popular culture … [they] have far more in common with other

students like themselves in other countries than they do with ninety

percent of the people who live in their own regions. The same common

ground is true for teachers at every level, who have more in common

with each other than they do with large segments of their surrounding

populations (Elliot 6).

This commonality Elliot speaks of between students and teachers across

international borders is an interesting observation. My observations with

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students and immigrants have shown me how open students are to people from

Other places.

Having the opportunity to encourage immigrants to speak French and

to act as welcoming ambassadors of the Québécois language and culture

instills great pride in my students. Moreover immigrants enjoy the opportunity

to meet students and exchange cultural stories. This exchange of stories is an

important aspect of cultural code-switching because it encourages acceptance

between different groups and promotes a better understanding of difference(s).

The school trips have been so successful that I have started a social/cultural

club outside class. Cégep students and immigrants meet once a month to

socialize and exchange more intimately with Others. I feel confident that

encouraging such exchanges and such forms of cultural code-switching has a

positive and motivating impact on my students and on their attitudes towards

new immigrants. Equally important, immigrants enjoy a relaxed, intimate

setting where they can practice their French, learn about Québec’s particular

cultural context(s) and most important make friends inside Barthes’ sphere of

friendship – une relation privilégiée.

As more immigrants are welcomed into Québec City’s majority

francophone community, teachers in francisation programs need to approach

language instruction as an empathetic understanding of Other cultural codes.

The teachers I have met in these programs are trained to teach language with a

greater emphasis on cultural codes. Their enthusiasm and desire to code-switch

with their students has increased the interest of some of my students to pursue

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such specialized language teaching. I believe that teachers at all levels,

primary, secondary, and post-secondary, should include some culturally

diverse code-switching material to promote a more inclusive and respectful

dialogue between people of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Such

a focus equips students to intimately communicate with Others and compete

more effectively in today’s job market infected/affected by globalization.

Teaching students to code-switch, encouraging them to become multilingual,

offers students a better understanding of, and better interaction with, people

from other cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Such interactions and language

education which focus on multilingual growth would promote, in my opinion,

a better social/political/economical climate between Québécois and Other

groups. In most instances, distance between people is a manifestation of fear

and insecurity about change or shifts in power dynamics between cultural

groups. However if people communicate intimately with each other such

barriers are bound to weaken since it is difficult to harbor negative feelings

towards people we intimately identify with. While this may seem utopic in its

vision, I would argue that it is an important strategy.

If we look at Québec’s Loi 101 and how it is applied today there are

some obvious problems. I believe it is time to introduce English immersion

into our public school system (similar to the English Canadian model of

French immersion) here in Quebec. As well, rather than viewing English as a

continued threat to the French language, as a teacher I believe more focus is

required on better French education at the primary, secondary, and post-

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secondary levels. An equal focus on better English education at the primary,

secondary, and post-secondary levels is also needed. In today’s globalized

culture, fighting the hegemony of English (at least in a business context) seems

futile. There will always be power struggles between language(s) and

culture(s).

In Québec, the desire to privilege French in the community and the

workplace has merit. But Québec would be, in my opinion, a more formidable

opponent in its ongoing war against the hegemony of English if its citizens

mastered English! If we look at the number of private language schools in

Québec City that offer classes to businesses and governments, it becomes

difficult to contest the need for better education in English before citizens

enter the job market! By the same rationale, new immigrants should be

encouraged to preserve their language of origin while becoming proficient in

French and in English. Such reciprocity fosters more harmonious meetings

between citizens and immigrants. More importantly, services immigrants

receive to integrate into their adopted communities would not be wasted as

more immigrants would choose to stay in smaller spaces such as Quebec City.

If the goal is the integration of new immigrants over assimilation then the

value of speaking different languages must be respected and therefore

promoted. Because language preservation and cultural pride are strong aspects

of every culture, I believe a better understanding and acceptance of differences

must also be promoted in the home and by extension encouraged and taught in

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the classroom. In this way it is more naturally translated into the daily fibre of

our social, cultural, and political lives.

Final comments

As our immigrant population increases, our education system needs to

focus more on literatures produced by migrant writers. We need to find more

examples of migrant writers who employ code-switching techniques, focus on

more models of bi(multi)lingual education. Just as medical research seeks new

methods of healing, protection, and understanding of disease, research in

education must continually move in more innovative directions. I believe that

classroom curriculum should be designed to effectively bridge gaps between

people and foster creative connectivity. Broader, more culturally inclusive

literary choices are therefore an important step in this direction. After all,

where a person should be culturally and linguistically is a matter of social and

environmental conditioning. We are all educated inside spaces of tradition,

religious codes/signs framed by cultural and communal values. Thus how we

negotiate identity between such codes/signs determines our social and cultural

identity. What is important is how we challenge cultural codes and modes of

behavior that fail to honor respectful connections between people. In any

region populated by people of different races and cultures, the codes that

define that particular culture will bend and shift as the population becomes

more culturally mixed. Globalization has accelerated this process and our need

for multilingual communication and connectivity between cultural codes. Here

in Canada, we should address the value of code-switching and multilingual

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education in cities like Montréal. What separates Montreal from other

cosmopolitan cities in Canada is its political climate. Montreal moves between

French and English inside political, social, and cultural zones of identification.

Thus how immigrant populations name themselves and assert their cultural

specificity is necessarily a product of negotiation inside two dominant cultural

and linguistic frames: English and French. In a city like Montreal “being two-

or three-headed … should become the accepted norm, and corridors should be

replaced by open spaces” (Denis 145). Corridors suggest that people move in

specific directions whereas open spaces illustrate movement as a freer more

fluid concept.

In urban spaces like Montréal, this fluidity may be understood through

the city’s international personality. Cuisine for instance is part of any city’s

culturally diverse personality. Whether we live in urban spaces or not, we all

wear clothes imported from other countries, adopt fashion styles different from

our own without viewing these adoptions negatively. Look for instance at how

far the notion of piercing or tattooing has evolved as fashion and as an artistic

cultural expression of individual identity. In fact if we stop and study our

consumption styles in fashion, clothing, music, arts, food and even our

communication styles (Facebooking) we quickly discover that we consume

hybridity on a daily basis. Then again, look at how hip-hop music and how its

vernacular language has impacted youth from different cultures. Is it even

possible to control or limit such shifting processes of linguistic and artistic

meaning-making? We tolerate even accept such changes quite easily. Coming

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back to the issue of language laws and signage in the news recently, the

following example illustrates how quickly some points can become political. A

restaurant in Québec City, Conti Caffé was asked to change its name and

replace all its glassware (a cost of over $15,000) because caffé is not a French

word. The cultural and artistic value behind this issue has been ignored.

Personally, I view such signage as an artistic form, what Sommer’s labels

creative play. Moreover expressions or words like caffé are universally

understood in most developed countries. Should we begin restricting signage

in this way? I cite this example here (not as a political point of debate) to

illustrate an important point I focus on in this thesis – the artistic and creative

value of linguistic and cultural code-switching. Unfortunately how host

cultures choose to integrate new immigrants into the dominant culture is first

and foremost a political issue. If respect between people is a priority then

code-switching seems like a healthy way to connect people. In those instances

when minority cultures attempt to (re)instate or integrate their minority

language(s) or specific cultural codes (visibly and non-visibly) inside the

dominant cultural center, tensions are bound to arise. The OQLF’s recent

tactics have been cited by some as assimilating/effacing strategies designed to

suppress Other cultures. By rattling the chains of established/old codes within

religion, tradition, customs, language and culture, people can engage in new

patterns of meaning. I understand this rattling as a kind of traumatic re-

awakening, a long overdue confrontation. I view it as an active state of being

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because it encourages discovery and a creative reassignment of cultural and/or

linguistic codes.

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APPENDIX A

Translated by: Keith Santorelli, David Warriner

Excerpts from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera

Meaning was not always clear in the sections preceding or following

these Spanish references. Anzaldúa begins her autohistoria with an un-

translated epigraph in Chapter One entitled The Homeland, Aztlán. Here is a

rough translation. This meaning is not provided for the reader, not in any

concrete terms.

El otro Mexico que aca hemos construido

el espacio es lo que ha sido terrotorio nacional.

Este es el esfuerzo de todos nuestros hermanos

y latinoamericanos que han sabido progressar (23).

The other Mexico that we constructed

The space we call our national territory/home and native land.

The fruits of labour of our brothers and other

Latin Americans that advanced the cause.

The next passage I chose to translate is from Chapter Two entitled

Movimientos de rebeldia y las culturas que traicionan. This untranslated

passage is preceded by the following information that provides the reader with

the essence of its meaning: “Women are made to feel total failures if they

don’t marry and have children” (39).

Y cuando te casas Gloria? Se te va a pasar el tren. Y yo les digo, Pos si

me caso, no va ser con un hombre. Se quedan calladitas. Si soy hija de

la Chingada. I’ve always been her daughter. No ‘tés chingando (39).

When are you getting married Gloria? You might miss the boat (very

loose translation). If I get married it won’t be to a man. ‘Calladitas’

slang for lesbian? If I’m the daughter of the fucked one (I’ve always

been her daughter) then I’m not fucking.

In the preceding quotation, it is the more profound meaning (what we

understand as nuance) that escapes the unilingual reader. In the next epigraph,

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taken from Chapter Five How to Tame a Wild Tongue, the subheading

preceding the epigraph reads Overcoming the Traditions of Silence. This

subheading allows unilingual readers to recognize the intent behind the un-

translated epigraph.

Ahogadas, escupimos el oscuro.

Peleando con nuestra propia sombra

El silencio nos sepulta (76).

Smothering the darkness/obscurity

Fighting our own shadow

Our silence buries us.

Once again, the more profound meaning, its nuance, remains obscure for the

unilingual English reader. Similarly, the following epigraph taken from

Chapter Seven La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness, is

another example of how the emotion behind the meaning remains absent for

the unilingual reader. The subtitle Somos una gente means We are a people

and here is the subsequent epigraph and its translation.

Hay tantisimas fronteras

Que dividen a la gente

Pero por cada frontera

Existe tambien un Puente (107).

So many frontiers/borders

that divide people

but for every border

there is also a bridge.

This idea of a border as a bridge between two peoples is not clearly heard in

Anzaldúa’s English words. She makes it clear that chicanos “need to allow

whites to be…allies…[that through their] literature, art, corridos, and folktales

[they ] must share [their] history [so the whites] will come to see that they are

not helping…but following our lead” (107). Anzaldúa’s tone suggests that

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chicanos need to start taking the lead rather than following the herd. Thus the

intention of her words does not translate the idea of a bridge between different

peoples; rather, it is about shifting power from one to another.

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APPENDIX B

Translations for Chapter Three by Carlos Jimenez

I had a more poetic connection with, and understanding of, Anzaldúa’s

story once I had these translations! If I spoke Spanish and undertood the

nuances, I am certain that my appreciation would have been greater!

No. 1

Yo soy un puente tendido

Del mundo gabacho al del mojado

Lo pasado me estira pa’ ‘tras

Y lo presente pa’ ‘delante,

Que la Virgen de Guadalupe me cuide

Ay ay ay, soy mexicana de este lado

I am the lying bridge

From the foreigner to the wet back worlds

The past pulls me backwards

And the present forward,

Guadalupe virgin watch for me (take care of me)

Ay ay ay, I`m Mexican from this side

No. 2

Tihueque, tihueque,

Vámonos, vámonos.

Un pájaro cantó

Con sus tribus salieron

De la ‘cueva del origen’

Los aztecas stiguieron al dios

Huitzilopochtli

Tihueque, tihueque

Let’s go, let’s go.

A bird sang

With his tribes came out

From the “cave of the origin”

The Aztecs followed the Huitzilopochtli god (War god)

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No. 3

Ya la mitad del terreno

Les vendió el traidor Santa Anna

Con lo que se ha hecho muy rica

La nación americana

Qué acaso no se conforman

Con el oro de las minas?

Ustedes muy elegantes

Y aquí nosotros en ruinas

Half of the land

Was sold by Santa Anna the traitor

And this has enriched

The American nation.

Don’t they conform

with the goldmines?

You really elegant

And us in ruins

No. 4

Esteas carnes indias que despreciamos nosotros los mexicanos asi como

despreciamos condenamos a nuestra madre, Malinali. Nos condenamos a

nosotros mismos. Esta raza vencida, enemigo cuerpo.

These Indian meats that us Mexicans despise, just like we despise

We condemn our mother, Malinali. We condemn ourselves. This defeated

race, hostile body

No. 5

Aquí en la soledad prospera su rebeldía

En la soledad Ella prospera

Here in solitude their rebellion thrives

In solitudes he prospers

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No. 6

El nueve de diciembre de año 1531

A las cuatro de la madrugada

Un pobre indioque se ilamaba Juan Diego

Iba cruzando el cerro de Tepeyác

Cuando oyó un canto de pájaro.

Alzó la cabeza vio que la cima del cerro

Estaba cubierta con una brillante nube blanca.

Parada en frente del sol

Sobre una luna creciente

Sostenida por un ángel

Estaba una azteca

Vestida en ropa de india

Nuestra Señora Maria de Coatlalopeub

Se le apareció.

‘Juan Dieguito, El-que-habla-como-un-águila,’

la Virgen le dijo en el lenguaje azteca.

Para hacer mi altar este cerro elijo.

‘Dile a tu gente que yo soy la madre de Dios,

A los indios yo les ayudaré.’

Estó se lo contó a Juan Zumárraga

Pero el obispo no le creyó.

Juan Diego volvió, Ilenó su tilma

Con rosas de castilla

Creciendo milagrosamente en la nieve.

Se las ilevó al obispo,

Y cuando abrió su tilma

El retrato de la Virgen

Ahí estaba pintado.

On December nine of 1531

At four in the morning

A humble Indian whose name was Juan Diego

Was crossing the Tepeyac hill

When he heard a bird’s song.

He raised his head to see the top of the hill

Covered with a bright white cloud

Standing in front of the sun

Over a crescent moon

Sustained by an angel

There was an Aztec woman

Dressed with indigenous clothes

Our Lady Mary of Coatlalopeub

She appeared to him

“Juan Dieguito, he who speaks like an eagle”

353

The virgin said in the Aztec language.

I choose this hill to build my altar.

“Tell your people I`m the mother of God,

I’ll help the Indians.”

He told this to Juan Zumarraga

But the bishop didn`t believe him.

Juan Diego came back, fill his tilma (tilma: apron like garment)

With Castilla roses

Growing mysteriously in the snow.

He took them to the bishop,

And when he opened his tilma

The virgin portrait

Was painted on it (tilma)

No. 7

A mis ancas caen los cueros de culebra

Cuatro veces por año los arrastro,

Me tropiezo y me caigo

Y cada vez que miro una culebra le pregunto

Qué traes conmigo?

Snake skin falls into my haunches

Four times a year I drag them,

I trip and fall

And every time I see a snake I ask

What is your problem with me?

No. 8

Intocada piel, en el oscuro velo con la noche. Embrazada en pesadillas,

escarbanado el hueso de la ternura me envejezco. Ya verás, tan bajo que me he

caído. Dias enteros me la paso atrancada con candado. Esa Gloria. Que estará

haciendo en su cuarto con la santa y la perversa? Mosquita muerta, por qué

‘tas tan quietecita? Por qué la vida me arremolina pa’ ca y pa’ ya como hoja

seca, me araña y me golpea, me deshuesa – mi culpa por qué me desdeño. Ay

mamá, tan bajo que me he caído.

Untouched skin, in the dark veil with the night. Pregnant with nightmares,

digging the tender bone as I get older. You will see, how deep I`ve fallen.

I spend whole days locked under key. That Gloria. What is she doing in her

room with the saint and the pervert? “innocent girl” (mosca muerta), why are

you so quiet? Why does life twists me back and forth, like a dry leave, it

scratches and hits me, debones me – my guilt, why do I disdain myself. Oh

mother, how deep I`ve fallen.

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No. 9

Esa Gloria, la que niega, la que teme correr desenfrenada, la que tiene miedo

renegar al papel de víctima. Esa, la que voltea su cara a la pared descascarada.

Mira, tan bajo que se ha caído.

That Gloria, she who denies, she who is afraid to run unbridled, she who is

afraid to return to the victim role. She, who turns her face to the peeling wall.

Look, how deep she’s fallen.

No. 10

Despierta me encuentra la madrugada, una desconocida aullando profecías

entre cenizas, sangrando mi cara con las uñas, escarbando la desgracia debajo

de mi máscara. Ya vez, tan bajo que me he caído.

The morning finds me awake, a stranger howling prophecies among ashes,

Making my face bleed with my finger nails, digging the disgrace from under

my mask. You see, how deep I`ve fallen.

No. 11

Se enmudecen mis ojos al saber que la vida no se entrega. Mi pecado no es la

rebeldía ni el anajamiento. Es que no aimé mucho, que anduive indecisa y a la

prisa, que tuve poca fe y no fui dispuesta de querer ser lo que soy. Traicioné a

mi camino.

My eyes mute to know that one should not surrender to life. My sin is not the

rebellion nor the alienation. I didn’t love enough, I was undecided and in a

rush, I had little faith and didn`t have the will to want to be what I am. I

betrayed my path (journey)

No. 12

Ya verás tan bajo que me he caído. Aquí nomás encerrada en mi cuarto,

sangrádome la cara con las uñas. Esa Gloria que rechaza entregarse a su

destino. Quiero contenerme, no puedo y desbordo. Vas a ver lo alto que voy a

subir, aquí vengo.

You will see how deep I’ve fallen. Here I am locked in my room, making my

face bleed with my finger nails. That Gloria, who refuses to give up to her

destiny. I want to restrain myself, I can`t and I overflow. You will see how

high I’ll rise, here I come.

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No. 13

Los que están mirando (leyedo),

Los que cuentan (o refieren lo que leen).

Los que vuelven ruidosamente las hojas de los códices.

Los que tienen en su poder

La tinta negra y roja (la sabiduría)

Y lo pintado,

Ellos nos Ilevan, nos guían,

Nos dicen el camino.

Those who are looking ( Reading),

Those who tell ( or refer to what they read).

Those who go thru the code’s pages loudly

Those who have in their power

The black and the red ink (wisdom)

And the painted,

They take us, guide us,

[they]Show us the way.

No. 14

Tallo mi cuerpo como si estuviera lavando un trapo. Toco las saltadas venas de

mis manos, mis chichis adormecidas como pájaras al anochecer. Estoy

encorvada sobre la cama. Las imágenes aletean alrededor de mi cama como

murciélagos, la sábana como que tuviese alas. El ruido de los trenes

subterráneos en mi sentido como conchas. Parece que las paredes del cuarto se

me arriman cada vez más cerquita.

I rub my body as I’m rubbing rags. I touch the dilated veins in my hands, my

numb breasts like birds at night. I bent over the bed. The images flutter around

my bed like bats, and the sheets as if they had wings. The noise of the

underground trains on my senses like shells. It feels as if the walls in my room

come closer and closer.

No. 15

Luego bota lo que no vale, los desmientos, los desencuentos, el

embrutecimiento. Aguarda el juicio, hondo y enraízado, de la gente antigua.

Then get rid of the unworthy, the denial, the confusion, the brutalizing. Keep

the judgment, deep and rooted, from the elders.

356

No. 16

Eres pura vieja

You are pure, old lady (or, you are plain old)

No. 17

Estamos viviendo en la noche de la Raza, un tiempo cuando el trabajo se hace

a lo quieto, en lo oscuro. El día cuando aceptamos tal y como somos y para

donde vamos y porque – ese día será el día de la Raza. Yo tengo el

compromiso de expresar mi visión, mi sensibilidad, mi percepcíón de la

revalidacíón de la gente mexicana, su mérito, estimación, honra, aprecio, y

validez.

We are living in the night of the Race, a time when the work is done quietly, in

the dark. The day when we accept what we are, where we are going and why –

that day will be the day of the Race. I have the commitment to express my

vision, my sensitivity, my perception or the renewal of the Mexican people,

their merit, esteem, honor, appreciation and validity.

No. 18

Tanto tiempo sin verte casa mía,

Mi cuna, mi hondo nido de la huerta.

Long time no see, my home,

My cradle, my deep nest in the orchard

357

APPENDIX C: INTERVIEWS

Five respondents from Montréal, One respondent from Québec City

This small sampling is a tiny step forward in a larger survey I would like to do

in the future, comparing code-switching and how people view

cultural/linguistic attachment(s) between Montréal and Québec City.

Number of years in Montreal Attachment to the city’s cosmopolitan

identity

14 YES

52 NO

11 Anglophone culture

31 YES

9 YES

Québec City: 32

(Franco)Anglophone culture

Identify with origins, adopted, country, etc No. Of languages spoken

Code-switching

Adopted city of Montreal 3

always

Origins-Italian 3

depends

Ethnicity, gender, language, occupation 3

always

Origin, ethnicity, occupation 3

sometimes

Two ethnicities 3

sometimes

Two ethnicities 2

sometimes

Since this is such a small sampling, I do not wish to make any assumptions or

conclusions. However I wanted to include these results here to illustrate the

role language plays in how people communicate. Although there are many

358

challenges, I am convinced that code-switching (or simply the choice of

switching between languages) offers people a more intimate

connection/communication with others.

359

INTERVIEW RESPONDENTS

1) FRANCO FABI

Where were you born? Sherbrooke, Canada

How long have you lived in Montréal? Twice: 4 years and 10 years

Do you feel that you identify with Montréal in terms of your cultural identity?

Explain why or why not.

I think so, Montreal is very open to different cultures and I've

traveled a lot so I like to think that i can understand and adjust to

differences, it make life more fun.

How do you view Montréal’s cultural diversity in relation to your personal

identity? To what degree has Montréal’s diverse make-up of immigrants and

its Anglophone and Francophone populations had an impact on the way you

translate your own identity: a great deal, somewhat, not at all.

A great deal... coming from a small city I grew up in French in a

very narrow minded city... on the other hand my family is very

open being Italian so they showed me diversity, food, religion etc...

I have lots of family I could visit in other countries so i guess it

made me want to see more of the other cultures.

When I moved to Montreal I met so many people from so many

different backgrounds and i played soccer so we had a mix of

everything on the team and also working in a club we met so many

people.

Do you identify first and foremost by your {nationality either country of origin

or host/adopted country, your ethnicity, your race, your language, your

religion, your social class or your occupation}? If you believe none of these

responses are applicable, explain why?

I’m actually not very attached to Canada and Quebec. probably

more Montreal if I had to choose. I really don't like the French

Canadian mentality... so I guess I feel closer to my Italian origins...

I really don't like any religion that preaches disrespect of the other

religion. I like everybody lol.

How many languages do you speak?

2 1/2 my Italian is not very strong anymore.

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Identify the languages you can read and write in?

French and English and I can read Italian.

How often do you speak a language other than English at home, with friends

or at work? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never speak a

language other than English?

We speak French at home. I speak English in most of my work

except at Maurice.

As a child, how often did you speak a language other than English with your

parents?

Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never spoke a language other

than English with your parents?

We spoke French and English 60/40.

If you speak more than one language, do you switch between languages when

you are conversing with friends? How often would you say you switch

between languages in a single conversation, always, usually, sometimes, or

never?

Always!

How culturally diverse was your childhood neighborhood: Would you say it

was very diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

The city was not diverse at all but all of my friends on my soccer

team were very diverse for such a small town... I probably had six

different cultures represented on my team.

How culturally diverse is your current neighborhood: Would you say it is very

diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all

Not at all, I live in Sillery, Quebec lol

2) STEVE GALLUCCIO

Where were you born? I was born in Montreal.

How long have you lived in Montréal? All my life (52 years).

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Do you feel that you identify with Montréal in terms of your cultural identity?

Explain why or why not.

Yes I do. Montreal is a city of immigrants, much like New York.

The multi-cultural fabric is what makes this city so vibrant.

How do you view Montréal’s cultural diversity in relation to your personal

identity? To what degree has Montréal’s diverse make-up of immigrants and

its Anglophone and Francophone populations had an impact on the way you

translate your own identity: a great deal, somewhat, not at all.

Not at all, but I’m quite self-centered. I am who I am and if

someone doesn’t like it, they can get go fuck themselves (pardon

the raw language).

Consider your response to the previous question and provide one or two

concrete examples.

Do you identify first and foremost by your {nationality either country of origin

or host/adopted country, your ethnicity, your race, your language, your

religion, your social class or your occupation}? If you believe none of these

responses are applicable, explain why?

I identify first and foremost by my nationality. Italian. North

American Italian. Not European Italian. Italian-Montrealer. We

have a created our own culture here which is quite different than

the European Italian culture. I feel the need to hang out in Little

Italy at least once a week, I do my grocery shopping at Milano, I

never buy Italian products in a Loblaws. That’s about all the

examples I can think of.

Consider your response to the previous question. How strong would you say

your level of attachment is to the choice you identify with? Would you say

your attachment is: {not strong at all, slightly strong, somewhat strong, or very

strong}? Justify/explain your response.

Very strong. The way I speak, the way I look at things, the way I

work. It’s all very Italian. Quite over the top sometimes, and things

get done but not in a very linear fashion. My life is quite chaotic

and abstract. I read a quote by Oscar Wilde I believe it went

something like this, speaking of Italy: “For a country with little

money, I have never seen such palatial train stations”. Italy is full

of contradictions. And I believe I am one big contradiction.

How many languages do you speak? Three.

362

Identify the languages you can read and write in?

English, French, Italian

How often do you speak a language other than English at home, with friends

or at work? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never speak a

language other than English?

I speak mostly both English and French at home, and French or

English depending on who I am with outside the house. I would

say I use both languages equally.

As a child, how often did you speak a language other than English with your

parents? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never spoke a

language other than English with your parents?

I never spoke English with my parents. Always Italian.

If you speak more than one language, do you switch between languages when

you are conversing with friends? How often would you say you switch

between languages in a single conversation, always, usually, sometimes, or

never?

Again it depends on the group I am with. But I don’t like switching

languages. I prefer that the conversation stay in the language it

started in. I abide by one simple rule: always finish the sentence

with the language you started it with.

How culturally diverse was your childhood neighborhood: Would you say it

was very diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Not very diverse.

How culturally diverse is your current neighborhood: Would you say it is very

diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Somewhat diverse.

3) ITALIAN FEMALE – wished to remain anonymous

Where were you born? Toronto, Ontario.

How long have you lived in Montréal? 11 years.

363

Do you feel that you identify with Montréal in terms of your cultural identity?

Explain why or why not.

Sometimes. I identify with Montreal ( part of my cultural identity-

Anglophone Canadian) but not in the other part Italian. There are

distinct groups of Italians that immigrated to different parts of

North America (North, Central, South, ect.) and that affects the

cultural traditions one is exposed to in each city.

How do you view Montréal’s cultural diversity in relation to your personal

identity? To what degree has Montréal’s diverse make-up of immigrants and

its Anglophone and Francophone populations had an impact on the way you

translate your own identity: a great deal, somewhat, not at all.

Somewhat

Consider your response to the previous question and provide one or two

concrete examples.

Do you identify first and foremost by your {nationality either country of origin

or host/adopted country, your ethnicity, your race, your language, your

religion, your social class or your occupation}? If you believe none of these

responses are applicable, explain why?

If it is the main identity markers which is being asked---it would be

a combination of ethnicity, gender, language(s) and occupation.

Consider your response to the previous question. How strong would you say

your level of attachment is to the choice you identify with? Would you say

your attachment is: {not strong at all, slightly strong, somewhat strong, or very

strong}? Justify/explain your response.

How many languages do you speak? Identify the languages you can read and

write in?

English, French , Italian, Spanish (read in )

English and French (write in)

How often do you speak a language other than English at home, with friends

or at work? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never speak a

language other than English?

Usually.

364

As a child, how often did you speak a language other than English with your

parents? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never spoke a

language other than English with your parents?

Sometimes with parents, often with grandparents.

If you speak more than one language, do you switch between languages when

you are conversing with friends? How often would you say you switch

between languages in a single conversation, always, usually, sometimes, or

never?

Always.

How culturally diverse was your childhood neighborhood: Would you say it

was very diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Somewhat diverse.

How culturally diverse is your current neighborhood: Would you say it is very

diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Very diverse.

4) PATRICK JEAN BAPTISTE

Where were you born? Haiti

How long have you lived in Montréal? Since May 1982 - almost 31 years.

Do you feel that you identify with Montréal in terms of your cultural identity?

Explain why or why not.

Oui je me suis bien integré avec la culture à Montréal. J'ai fait tous

mes études ici.

How do you view Montréal’s cultural diversity in relation to your personal

identity? To what degree has Montréal’s diverse make-up of immigrants and

its Anglophone and Francophone populations had an impact on the way you

translate your own identity: a great deal, somewhat, not at all.

Beaucoup d'activités culturelles surtout pendant l'été.--- a great

deal

Consider your response to the previous question and provide one or two

concrete examples.

365

Activités culturelles et activités d'intégration à la culture

québécoise.

Do you identify first and foremost by your {nationality either country of origin

or host/adopted country, your ethnicity, your race, your language, your

religion, your social class or your occupation}? If you believe none of these

responses are applicable, explain why?

Origin, ethnicity and occupation

Consider your response to the previous question. How strong would you say

your level of attachment is to the choice you identify with? Would you say

your attachment is: {not strong at all, slightly strong, somewhat strong, or very

strong}? Justify/explain your response.

Somewhat strong: distinction énorme au niveau de la couleur de la

peau pas du langage, certaines personnes ont quand même une

mauvaise opinion des gens de couleur.

How many languages do you speak? Three

Identify the languages you can read and write in? French and English

How often do you speak a language other than English at home, with friends

or at work? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never speak a

language other than English?

Always.

As a child, how often did you speak a language other than English with your

parents? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never spoke a

language other than English with your parents?

Always.

If you speak more than one language, do you switch between languages when

you are conversing with friends? How often would you say you switch

between languages in a single conversation, always, usually, sometimes, or

never?

Sometimes.

How culturally diverse was your childhood neighborhood: Would you say it

was very diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Somewhat diverse.

366

How culturally diverse is your current neighborhood: Would you say it is very

diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Not very diverse.

5) MARIE-CHRISTINE DEPESTRE

Where were you born? Montreal

How long have you lived in Montréal?

I lived with my parents in Laval for 22 years, so I’ve lived in

Montreal for almost 9 years.

Do you feel that you identify with Montréal in terms of your cultural identity?

Explain why or why not.

Yes, I consider my self as a French-Canadian Quebecer of Haitian

descent. All these roots are very well represented in Montreal.

There are still a lot of french speaking citizens in Montreal and

also it’s one of the places where a lot of Haitian immigrants moved

to from the 1960’s till now.

How do you view Montréal’s cultural diversity in relation to your personal

identity? To what degree has Montréal’s diverse make-up of immigrants and

its Anglophone and Francophone populations had an impact on the way you

translate your own identity: a great deal, somewhat, not at all.

A great deal.

Consider your response to the previous question and provide one or two

concrete examples.

I think I have a very good understanding and idea of many

different cultures being that they are so well represented in

Montreal. When you interact with people from different

backgrounds you’re bound to exchange knowledge. In my opinion,

any city that has a little Italy and a Chinatown is somewhat rich

culturally speaking.. In Montreal, you’ll find groups and cultural

community centers from a lot of ethnic groups. For example, the

HCGM (Hellenic community of Greater Montreal), I

used to go there because of my Greek friends and would learn a lot

about their culture, and even learned a few of their traditional

dances.

367

Do you identify first and foremost by your {nationality either country of origin

or host/adopted country, your ethnicity, your race, your language, your

religion, your social class or your occupation}? If you believe none of these

responses are applicable, explain why?

I identify with the French Canadian culture because I went to a

French school but I have my Haitian roots that are a big part of

who I am. I understand and speak Creole, cook Creole food and

was baptised like a lot of people from Haitian descent.

Consider your response to the previous question. How strong would you say

your level of attachment is to the choice you identify with? Would you say

your attachment is: {not strong at all, slightly strong, somewhat strong, or very

strong}? Justify/explain your response.

Very strong. It’s what I’ve been exposed to the most and at the

earliest stages of my life.

How many languages do you speak? Three

Identify the languages you can read and write in?

French, English and Creole.

How often do you speak a language other than English at home, with friends

or at work? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never speak a

language other than English?

Usually.

As a child, how often did you speak a language other than English with your

parents? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never spoke a

language other than English with your parents?

Usually.

If you speak more than one language, do you switch between languages when

you are conversing with friends? How often would you say you switch

between languages in a single conversation, always, usually, sometimes, or

never? Sometimes.

How culturally diverse was your childhood neighborhood: Would you say it

was very diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Not diverse at all. It was the early stages of suburbs

neighboorhoods.

368

How culturally diverse is your current neighborhood: Would you say it is very

diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Very diverse.

6) GERRY LESCOT

Where were you born? Port-au-Prince

How long have you lived in Québec City? 32 years

Do you feel that you identify with Québec in terms of your cultural identity?

Explain why or why not.

Quebec City is a predominantly white town but it does not matter

to me because I get along with the Whiteys.

How do you view Québec’s cultural diversity in relation to your personal

identity? To what degree has Québec’s diverse make-up of immigrants and its

Anglophone and Francophone populations had an impact on the way you

translate your own identity: a great deal, somewhat, not at all.

I feel comfy in both French and English.

Consider your response to the previous question and provide one or two

concrete examples.

When it is time to communicate with an Anglophone, I don’t look

down on the pavement.

Do you identify first and foremost by your {nationality either country of origin

or host/adopted country, your ethnicity, your race, your language, your

religion, your social class or your occupation}? If you believe none of these

responses are applicable, explain why?

Sometimes I say I am a Quebecer, sometimes I say I am Haitian

depending on what kind of answer my opposite want to hear.

Consider your response to the previous question. How strong would you say

your level of attachment is to the choice you identify with? Would you say

your attachment is: {not strong at all, slightly strong, somewhat strong, or very

strong}? Justify/explain your response.

Feel very strongly about being both Quebecer and Haitian.

369

How many languages do you speak? Two

Identify the languages you can read and write in?

French and English

How often do you speak a language other than English at home, with friends

or at work? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never speak a

language other than English?

French 80% of the time

As a child, how often did you speak a language other than English with your

parents? Would you say always, usually, sometimes, or never spoke a

language other than English with your parents?

Haitian Creole but didn’t pick it up properly, my parents teaching

of that language was too sporadic.

If you speak more than one language, do you switch between languages when

you are conversing with friends? How often would you say you switch

between languages in a single conversation, always, usually, sometimes, or

never?

With my bilingual friends, I may be tempted to switch between

English and French when I realize one of the languages is more

precise for what I am trying to say.

How culturally diverse was your childhood neighborhood: Would you say it

was very diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Not very diverse.

How culturally diverse is your current neighborhood: Would you say it is very

diverse, somewhat diverse, not very diverse, or not diverse at all?

Not very diverse.

370

ENDNOTES

i Obasan’s silence marks individual and group struggle to hold onto their dying Japanese

culture. Her silence also symbolizes her feeling of gratitude and her defence of Canada, even

as the country marginalizes her status as a Canadian and tries to efface Japanese Canadian

communities. However, Obasan’s silence does not in any way negate her as “the true and

rightful owner of the earth” (Kogawa 16). Rather it hides her grief “somewhere between

speech and hearing” with dignity (269).

ii The Tengu zoshi is a picture scroll from the Kamakura period (1296). However, unlike the

Choju giga, its subjects of caricatures can be identified with certainty because its pictorial part

is accompanied with texts, and some figures in the pictures are identified by captions. In its

first five scrolls, the Tengu zoshi critically addresses problems of the older Buddhist schools

by a twofold technique. On the one hand, in the textual part it first provides the official

histories of temples. Then, however, it adds a critical paragraph at the end of each and

deplores that the high priests, boasting of their prestigious heritage, tend to become tengu, i.e.

selfish and arrogant. (Umezu 1978: 2 [English text]) On the other hand, parts of the pictures

themselves directly illustrate the realities of the haughty monks pursuing their egoistical ends,

not mentioned in the text. (Ibid.) It criticizes especially the power struggle between the temple

complexes and the employment of the warrior monks. Umezu (1978: 2) considers the artist to

have had a critical, satirical spirit, and assumes that he belonged to Tendai. In the text of the

scroll centered on Kofuku-ji, which serves also as preface for the whole set of the Tengu zoshi,

the author states the theme of his work: these (priests of the major temples) all dwell in ego

attachment, harbor arrogance, and consider fame and profit as an important matter. For this

reason, they will without fail fall into the realm of ma [i.e. the Buddhist devil].•(Wakabayashi

1999: 493) In order to express such bad state of affairs, the Tengu zoshi employs the figure of

the tengu in its depiction of monks. Thereby it attempts to caricature the Buddhist sects, old

and new. (Umezu 1978: 2)

iii See page 62: Simon, Sherry. Le traffic des langues: traduction et culture dans la littérature

québécoise, Québec, Les Editions du Boréal, 1994.

iv In his subsequent work, Days Of Obligation, Rodriguez addresses his silence about his homosexuality.

v Several sections in Chapter Three were taken from my essay “Linguistic Hybridity in Gloria

Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Antonio D’Alfonso’s Avril ou l’anti-passion, and Hiromi Goto’s

Chorus of Mushrooms published in Translating Identity and the Identity of Translation. Editors:

Madelena Gonzalez and Francine Tolron. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006. (3-19).

vi I understand these influences more clearly after having visited the Musée de la civilisation in Québec

City in the fall of 2010 to see the exhibit entitled RIFF: Comment l’Afrique fait vibrer les Amériques. It

was an insightful, interactive exhibit that traced the origins of jazz and blues music in the Americas. Its

influences can be heard in every genre of North and South American music. Today’s music has been and

continues to be influenced and cross-pollinated with jazz and blues vibes. vii The notion of the new language may be interpreted as « Un texte à côté d’un texte…qui n’arrête pas

de parler…les rapports entre les langues mettent en jeu des asymétries de pouvoir, mais que la vérité de

la langue fonctionne à la fois en surface et ailleurs » (Brault qtd. In Simon, Trafic des langues 61).

viii Brault explains, « je flotte dans une inter-langue…un texte ni d’un autre, ni de moi, se dessine en

forme de chiasme…la voix cassée invite à la mort, comme elle ouvre à l’infini du possible » (qtd. in

Simon, Trafic des langues 62-63).

ix The pastagate issue went viral on February 14, 2013with its broadcast through Twitter,

Facebook and newspapers reaching audiences in Canada and all over the world. When

Buonanotte Restaurant in Montreal was fined for using Italian words on its menu instead of

371

French ones, they went public with their story. Ironically, this particular issue had begun while

the Liberals where in power. This restaurant was one of many others like Portofino and Conti

Caffé in Québec City that had received letters from the OQLF long before the Parti Québécois

had come into power. However the media attention Buonanotte created in February, 2013

resulted in a great deal of negative publicity against the Parti Québécois. The Parti Québécois

wished to toughen language laws (through Bill 14 which was being proposed in Parliament in

February, 2013) so the issue of public French signage became one of its primary focuses.

However all the negative media attention and publicity worked against their efforts and led to

the resignation of Louise Marchand, the head of the OQLF on March 8, 2013.

x In her study, “Early French Immersion: How has the original Canadian model stood the test

of time?”, Marjorie Bingham Wesche illustrates the benefits of early immersion programs.

Her findings suggest that “EFI students achieved both a high level of L2 development and

mastery of school subject matter equivalent to that of similar students studying through their

L1, English. These results hold for mathematics, geography and other social sciences, science,

and the other components of the elementary school curriculum including English L1

development” (360). On the basis of such findings, I believe that triglossic educational models

like the ones in Luxembourg merit more attention.

xi As Wesche points out, “European schools are particularly interesting for their success in

incorporating ambitious language arts components in each language into the regular school

program. In the case of a second or third language, language arts instruction is provided for

aperiod of time before the language is used as a medium of instruction. These schoolsalso

provide regular contact with native speaker peers and adults – opportunities also widely

available out of class. This contrasts with the experience of Canadian immersion children, who

are lucky to be involved in class trips to French-speaking areas or bilingual exchanges once or

twice during their schooling. The importance of these components is indicated by the results of

a comparative study (Baetens 370 Marjorie Bingham Wesche Beardsmore & Swain 1985,

Baetens Beardsmore 1993), in which, although Canadian French immersion students gave

solid performances, grade 8 European School learners of French outperformed immersion

learners of the same age on tests of both grammatical accuracy and conversational fluency.

These results probably relate not only to the unique curriculum but also to the characteristics

of many of the students (in terms of parents' socio-economic level, educational background

and knowledge of other languages), and to the immediate pertinence of the L2 for both social

interaction and consequential school-leaving exams. Needless to say, the European Schools

are very expensive and extremely complicated to run. However, they successfully provide

multilingual schooling to approximately 12,000 children, demonstrating what is possible for

school language instruction under favorable conditions. They are thus a beacon for

multilingual education elsewhere” (369-370).

372

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